Polish immigrant Karol Karol finds himself out of a marriage, a job and a country when his French wife, Dominique, divorces him after six months due to his impotence. Forced to leave France after losing the business they jointly owned, Karol enlists fellow Polish expatriate Mikołaj to smuggle him back to their homeland.
1982, Poland. A translator loses her husband and becomes a victim of her own sorrow. She looks to sex, to her son, to law, and to hypnotism when she has nothing else in this time of martial law when Solidarity was banned.
Véronique is a beautiful young French woman who aspires to be a renowned singer; Weronika lives in Poland, has a similar career goal and looks identical to Véronique, though the two are not related. The film follows both women as they contend with the ups and downs of their individual lives, with Véronique embarking on an unusual romance with Alexandre Fabbri, a puppeteer who may be able to help her with her existential issues.
Juliusz Starzewski goes to Rome to seek justice on behalf of his father.
Dorota Geller, a married woman, faces a dilemma involving her sick husband's prognosis. Her husband's doctor, who believes in God, sweared about it in vain.
As high school students put on a politically-engaged school play, tensions begin to rise between them and their headmaster. The conflict seems to mirror the social situation in the 1980s Poland.
Five short stories. (1) “Czas przybliża, czas oddala” – Edward recalls his unfulfilled love for Anna and, years later, writes to her sister Zofia, mistaking her for Anna. (2) “Krąg istnienia” – A girl falls for Wacek at an ice rink; pressured by family, she marries a soap manufacturer. (3) “Paryż 1945” – A Polish refugee soldier and an American woman share a fleeting wartime bond before she leaves at dawn. (4) “Stary profesor” – Two men seek an old professor to fulfill a dying prisoner’s last wish; Roger impersonates a former pupil. (5) “Nauczycielka” – Neglected wife Zofia accepts film tests, only to find the director seeks an ordinary woman.
This sumptuously photographed period drama is set in 1791 Vienna. Maximilian Bardo, an opportunistic 18-year old Viennese man with aspirations to rise above his bourgeois upbringing, looks for a chance to shoehorn himself into the nobility. His hopes lead him to the castle of a wealthy inventor, Alexander Plant. It is here that a strange story is played out, as Maximilian, full of naive illusions and innocent ideals of what it means to be wealthy and noble, quickly loses his innocence. Falling prey to the jaded aristocrats in residence, he is cruelly initiated into their decadent games.
After returning to Poland, the painter Aleksander Gierymski encounters a lack of understanding of his works.
A famous opera singer comes to his hometown in Poland, where he loses his voice.
Halka lives with her godmother in a modest cottage in a small highland village. One day, young Janusz arrives in the village to take possession of his ancestral estate. Halka falls madly in love with Janusz, who promises her eternal love and marriage. Soon, Janusz's mother arrives at the estate to inform him that they are ruined. The only salvation is to marry the daughter of a wealthy steward. Janusz leaves with his mother, promising Halka that he will return. Halka, who is pregnant, eagerly awaits the return of her beloved. The whole village turns its back on her, and she is supported only by Jontek, whose feelings she once rejected. Unable to wait for Janusz's return, she decides to go to the city, accompanied by her faithful Jontek. There she learns of Janusz's engagement to the steward's daughter, Zofia. Heartbroken, she returns to the village. There, she suffers another blow...
Henry Kesdi is a silenced classical composer and a survivor of the Holocaust. He is coaxed out from retirement by an inspired musicologist, Stefan, who convinces him to compose a complex symphony on his neglected piano. As a help Kesdi gets his new musical secretary. His loyal wife reluctantly accepts her as his young lover.
A film meant to show what people were told to believe about the wonderful lives that Polish peasants led in post-war Poland.
Five interpretations of Hamlet's monologue.
Madrid, 1962. More than twenty years after the civil war has finished, a communist comes back to Spain to kill a traitor.
Siberia, contrary to people’s first association, is not a deserted land covered with snow. During the one-year stay, Polish documentary filmmakers collected materials that make up the image of the modern industrial area of the North.
A biology professor, Adam enters a hospital for observation. He is a loner and a serious-minded man, who dislikes any display of emotions. He spends three months in the hospital while being tested. After observing patients and hospital routines around him from a distance, he learns that he will need a kidney transplant. Meanwhile his personal and professional life is falling apart: he refuses his wife's offer to donate the kidney for him; the scientific problem he was working on has been solved elsewhere. In the end Adam cracks under the prolonged pressure, waiting for the sound of an ambulance bringing a moribund patient whose kidney may be used for the transplant.
In what appears to be an inexplicable incident, a man drives up to a resort hotel in midwinter, throws away his car keys, enters, and proceeds to agitate everyone he meets with his urgency -- a message he is somehow unable to communicate. Then he leaves, disappearing in the snow. Later, the people he appeared to have upset have gathered to search for him and find him frostbitten, but alive. Visiting him at the sanatorium to which he has been taken, they gradually discover what was really happening.
During a botched robbery, Markheim murders an elderly antique dealer. Consumed by guilt and confusion, he begins to lose his grip on reality until a spectral dog leads him to a mysterious figure who knows all his secrets. Based on the short story by Robert Louis Stevenson.
This is the true story about a group of Romani's (gypsy) in occupied Poland during World War II as they confront the atrocities and tragedies of a forgotten holocaust.
Film opens with the mad rush of haphazard freedom as the concentration camps are liberated. Men are trying to grab food, change clothes, bury their tormentors they find alive. Then they are herded into other camps as the Allies try to devise policy to control the situation. A young poet who cannot quite find himself in this new situation, meets a headstrong Jewish young girl who wants him to run off with her, to the West. He cannot cope with her growing demands for affection, while still harboring the hatred for the Germans and disdain for his fellow men who quickly revert to petty enmities.
An Uruguayan diplomat brings his new wife with him on a business trip to Poland in the summer immediately preceding the outbreak of World War II.
A father and daughter, Michał and Anka, have a unique intimacy, which the college-aged Anka is beginning to feel conflicted about. When she finds an unopened letter from her deceased mother, it seems to justify her attraction to Michał, who may not in fact be her father.
A banker troubled by both business and personal problems is transferred to a small town. There he meets and seduces an older woman. Together, they decide to pull off a payroll holdup together.
A budding playwright is thrilled to find out that his play will be performed at a prestigious theater, but a series of problems pile up, along with the general feeling that opening night will be disastrous.
The story of Polish pedagogue Janusz Korczak and his dedication to protecting Jewish orphans during the war.
A student who missed his final exam because of illness arrives at his professor's house to beg to be allowed to take it.
"Long is the Road" - The first feature film to represent the Holocaust from a Jewish perspective. Shot on location at Landsberg, the largest DP camp in U.S.-occupied Germany, and mixing neorealist and expressionist styles, the film follows a Polish Jew and his family from pre-war Warsaw through Auschwitz and the DP camps.
Berlin, 1990. At the invitation of his actor friends, who have already lived abroad for many years, Max, a Polish theater director, comes to Berlin. They begin to work together. They try to realize their dream: to stage a play, the staging of which was prevented by the imposition of martial law ten years earlier. The way they raise funds (selling pieces of the "historic" wall) and struggle against the heartless machinery of bureaucracy forms the axis of the film. In their efforts, the four protagonists are assisted by Regina, a translator familiar with local customs and practices. The film deals with the problems of artists in the new, commercializing reality.
In 1931, just before the New Year, in a house of architect Henryk Zaremba scream rips the night. The daughter of Zaremba is found killed in her bedroom, obviously killed with a pickaxe. The police arrives and starts the investigation. Rita Gorgonova, the governess of the girl and also lover of Zaremba becomes the main suspect. Film based on real events - investigation and court trials of the most famous pre-war Polish murder case. Despite being historically accurate the movie is both involving and entertaining since the case was simple on the surface, but very complicated in details.
In the 18th Century, in Bohemia, a government surveyor meet a priest during a lunch and remained intrigued by him. Years later, in a stony valley, the two men meet again and form a deep friendship.
Jan weds his mentally ill wife Joanna at her insistence, but her increasing dependence on sedatives, and the clandestine extra pills supplied by Jan, their son Piotr and Jan’s friend Maria, leads to Joanna’s fatal overdose. Accused of murder, Jan endures a trial, psychiatric evaluation and deep depression before the case is dropped; only after reconciling with his children does he finally leave the clinic to return home.
This sarcastic drama is taken from the popular Hungarian novel by Tibor Dery. A terminally ill writer (Jozef Kroner) of national prominence watches as family and friends gather like vultures for his imminent demise. Relli (Alexander Bardini) smiles and pretends to be the writer's friend as he tries to get his hands on an unpublished manuscript. The opening scene is the highlight of the film. While the dead writer is being laid to rest in a national funeral, he emerges from the coffin and walks into his own grave while the mourners flee in terror.
This documentary about St. Mary's Altar takes the viewer back to the 15th century, when Wit Stwosz, a master of woodcarving, came to Poland from Nuremberg. At the request of the City Council, he created an altar that is unmatched not only in Kraków.
A documentary portrait of Aleksander Zelwerowicz, the master of the Polish scene, created on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of his artistic career. He played over 800 roles, the directors of the film chose his three masterpieces: a theater one, a film one, and a radio one.
The mis-adventures of three Polish-Jews on the road to Gdansk is the basis for this German comedy that was filmed in New York, Germany, and Poland. Genovefa and Moshe have been married and living in New York for 30 years. Physically the couple resembles Mr. and Mrs. Jack Sprat. The two have decided to return to Poland for a visit. They intend to have Moshe's best friend Isaac, an unlucky, depressive German, take care of their house while they are gone. Unfortunately, Isaac loses his job before they go and ends up accompanying them on a Polish freighter. When the ship dies in a German port, the threesome must go overland to Gdansk. They encounter many mishaps along the way.