Jowita Budnik

Songs About Love

Robert, a young musician living in the shadow of his successful father, rebels against his father’s authority. On meeting a novice small-town vocalist, he is confronted with the nature of his inner struggle. In the face of a conflict between feeling and ambition, their joint musical project is left hanging in the air.

All Our Fears

Daniel is respected by his village community as long as he bravely supports the fight for their affairs. He is in love with the boy next door, Olek, who is not ready to reveal his sexual identity. Their relationship develops in secret. When a teenage friend can no longer take homophobic attacks and commits a suicide, Daniel tries to convince the villagers to organise a service of the Stations of the Cross together for the intention of the victim.

For Love

Marlena struggles with a serious marital crisis due to the alcohol addiction of her husband, Zbigniew. Via the Internet she meets Bruno, a Senegalese, who brings back Marlena’s self-confidence and sense of womanhood. However, it turns out that the man plans something rather different for her than building a relationship with her…

Playing Hard

Stories of three women struggling with alcohol. Dorota is a great prosecutor. Using her immunity, she tries to avoid responsibility for her offenses committed under the influence of alcohol. Her husband, a famous politician, helps her keep the problem secret and rescues her from many troubles but he slowly loses patience. A respected children surgeon Teresa has lost her family due to drinking problem, all she is left with is her job at the hospital where she is the main doctor. The situation goes out of control when the woman comes drunk to the hospital. A student, Magda, likes to party hard and because she is a good student and has a great job, no-one opposes that. At one moment, the girl loses control. A tragedy happens.

The Passage

A storm causes damage to a bridge that connects the world of the living with the world of the dead. For this reason, the information about Maria’s own death reaches her with delay.

In for a Murder

A stay-at-home mom and avid reader of crime stories discovers the deepest secrets of a small town's residents while investigating a woman's murder.

Mother's Day

Nina, a former NATO special operations agent living in hiding, has to use all her deadly skills to rescue her son who has been kidnapped by ruthless gangsters. Finding Max is a double opportunity for her. A chance to feel the adrenaline rush again, and an opportunity to get back into the life of the son she had to abandon years ago.

Brothers

A village in Mazowsze, 1943. Two teenage boys, Janek and Staszek, find two young Jews hiding on a farm. They soon realize that the boys, Abram and Chaim, are their age and are the sons of a respected pharmacist who lived in a nearby town before the war. They were the only survivors of the anti-Jewish pogrom led by the Germans in the nearby forest. In spite of the deadly threat, Janek and Staszek decide to hide the boys and keep it a secret.

Be Somebody

Together with his family, Wiktor moves into a recently bought flat, which turns out to have belonged to Lech Wałęsa, a symbol of freedom and a legend as a simple electrician who became Poland’s president many years ago.

The Word

Days before the end of the school year, Liliana gives Janek an ultimatum, giving him 24 hours to either prove his love for her or forget about her altogether.

Songs About Love

Robert, a young musician living in the shadow of his successful father, rebels against his father’s authority. On meeting a novice small-town vocalist, he is confronted with the nature of his inner struggle. In the face of a conflict between feeling and ambition, their joint musical project is left hanging in the air.

Papusza

The rise and fall of the most distinguished Polish-Gypsy poetess Bronislawa Wajs, widely known as Papusza, and her relationship with her discoverer, writer Jerzy Ficowski.

East Wind

The true story of General Smyslovsky and the anti-Communist 1st Russian National Army receiving shelter in Liechtenstein in 1945 and successfully resisting Soviet pressure to be returned for execution in the USSR.

Po upadku

A story of high-ranking party members from the 1970s embroiled in political deception.

Young Eagles

Grodno, the eastern border of pre-war Poland. On September 1, 1939, German planes bomb the city. One of the bombs hits the school of Leoś, Ewelina and Tadek. Literally and symbolically, the world of a carefree childhood, fun and first crushes ends.

Wet Monday

Fifteen-year-old Klara is raped by a masked boy during Wet Monday. A year later, just before the first anniversary of the incident, she becomes paralyzed by a fear of water. Looking for support and understanding, Klara turns to her new, somewhat esoteric friend.

Sucker's Death

A small town somewhere in Poland. "Małolat", a member of a nationalist militia, is blackmailed into planting a bomb at an LGBT rally in Warsaw. However, he does not know that his gay brother will be at the demonstration. The mother of both characters will get involved in the whole situation. The young man faces a dramatic choice.

Masters of the Planet

On the day before the wedding, the groom's parents visit the bride's parents. They all quickly discover that their spouses are not their soulmates. As a result, the couples reshuffle and new relationships are formed.

Jeziorak

A provincial police unit raids a forest moonshine operation but is ambushed, leaving one officer wounded and the bootlegger at large, while simultaneously a young woman’s body is found drifting on a lake. Pregnant Sub-Inspector Iza Dereń juggles these intertwined investigations, helped by her junior colleague Marzec, just as two fellow officers, including her partner, vanish.

Never Say Never

Thirty-year-old Ama is a brilliant, ice-cold headhunter for global corporations whose polished single life in Warsaw conceals her deep longing to become a mother. When she breaks her own professional code to go on a date with Marek, the handsome Silicon Valley recruit she’s placed, her controlled world is disrupted.

Sophie Seeks 7

After breaking up with her cheating boyfriend, a 30-year-old woman reconnects with six of her exes while trying to find the love of her life.

Retrieval

19 year old Wojtek lives in a poverty stricken Polish town. He is in love with an older woman, an illegal emigrant from Ukraine. He boxes in illegal matches to get money and is spotted by a man running a security business. Accepting this man's offer means becoming a gangster, but this could allow him to a residence permit for his girlfriend Katya.

Death Before the Wedding

When Maja brings her fiancé home, her traditional parents must overcome their cultural biases amidst a crisis at their dairy farm. Can love find a way?

Through the Wall

In November 1947, Wieslawa Pajdak was arrested for her activities in the anti-communist underground and sent to prison on Rakowiecka Street. A few days later, Jerzy Smiechowski was placed in the next cell. One night, they begin talking through the wall via Morse code. Although it's hard to believe, this is how they met and fell in love. They got engaged through a wall. Seven years later, they married in prison, where they met for the first time. They lived together for fifty years.

All for My Mother

Olka is seventeen years old. For years, she had been looking for her mother. Her constant escapes from the orphanage landed her in a reformatory. She only wants her mother back.

Birds Are Singing in Kigali

We meet ornithologist Anna in 1994 just as genocide is raging in Rwanda, perpetrated by the majority Hutus against the Tutsis. Anna manages to save the daughter of a colleague whose family has been murdered, and she takes her to Poland. But the woman returns to Rwanda to visit the graves of her loved ones. The director originally worked on the movie with her husband Krzysztof Krauze (My Nikifor – Crystal Globe, KVIFF 2005), but after his death in 2014 she eventually finished this challenging picture alone.

7 Minutes

Seven minutes - sweet moment that can change lives forever. History of several autumn, although extremely hot days in the life of Piotr Winkler, who in an unexpected way loses control over his stable and secure life. 37-year-old designer, happy husband of Marta and Agnieszka's father, goes to conference as a substitute for a colleague. There he meets an attractive brunette, which will soon topple the peaceful, happy world upside down.

My Nikifor

In 1960s Krynica, veteran artist Włosiński’s orderly life is disrupted when local outsider Nikifor - deaf, mute, and dismissed as a harmless eccentric - arrives at his studio and begins painting his naïve masterpieces. Their unlikely friendship transforms both men, sparking a late-life creative and personal rebirth that reshapes Włosiński’s world and finally earns Nikifor recognition for his singular talent.

Silent Night

Adam unexpectedly visits his family house at Christmas after a few years of working abroad. No family member knows about his secret plans and the real reasons of his visit.

Saviour Square

A story of a married couple with two children, whose housing problems, the man's infidelity and the woman's fragility lead the family to destruction.

Call Me Marianna

Her ex-wife won’t meet her. Her daughter rejects her. Her mother still calls her “son.” As Marianna transitions from male to female, she is abandoned by her loved ones, alone in a world unwilling to accept her true self. This multi-award-winning documentary is an intensely sympathetic and powerful account of one individual’s struggle to gain acceptance—even in the midst of profound physical hardship.

Icarus. The Legend of Mietek Kosz

Inspired by true events, a story of a blind grand piano genius. As a child Mietek loses his sight. His mother places him in the care of the nuns in Laski. At the centre for the blind the boy discovers that music may be his way of seeing the world again and of describing it. Mietek goes on to become a brilliant classical pianist. Once he discovers jazz music, though, he has only one goal left: to become the best jazz pianist in Poland. He is more and more successful, not only in Poland but around the world. He wins the prestigious Montreux Jazz Festival. Unexpectedly, a charismatic vocalist, Zuza, walks into his life. This meeting will change it forever.

The Debt

Based on true events, the movie tells the story of two men who want to start a scooter business but don't have the required collateral for a bank loan. Then one of them runs into a former flat neighbour who offers to lend them the money. The guy turns out to be a thug and starts to extort them. Their life goes downhill from there.

Strike

A nearly illiterate woman becomes one of the founders of Poland's Solidarity union.

Who Will Write Our History?

Documentary about a group of Jews, who collected and hid a lot of stories and documents about everyday jewish life in the Warsaw Ghetto.

Portret podwójny

A picture of the broken world at the end of the century. A couple of contemporary young Polish intellectuals, artistic souls. They are sensitive beyond mediocrity, hence the daily hustle and bustle is not an excuse for them to live: they want to give it a meaning and shape of their own choosing. They search for their "roots", only to find out once again that, apart from natural tenderness, they have nothing in common with their families. There is no question of rebellion, of generational strife. Today's 30-year-olds face only technical, not sentimental, obstacles; childhood memories of parents not seen every day sink in, the image of a child living apart indifferently.

Glasgow

Damian, a young boy raised by a single mother, believes that his father is a famous footballer playing for Glasgow Celtic F.C. His dream is to visit him. In his everyday life he has difficulty finding a common language with his mother who is trying to make a new life for herself with a younger man.

Justice

A young detective seeks the help of a discharged police officer, giving him the chance to reclaim his old life in exchange for solving a bank raid case.

Graduation Heist

Kapsel is a high school senior party animal who values ​​his close friends more than his final exams. When he realizes that finishing high school also means the breakup of his crew, he decides to ruin everyone's student plans and give them one more year of carefree fun. In order to save his friends from the hardships of entering adulthood, he plans to hack into the innovative system of the Ministry of Education and change the results of their final exams. In this daring action, he involves a group of high school students with the smallest chances of passing their final exams and... his long-lost grandfather, full of controversial life wisdom. Will Kapsel's brilliant plan succeed? Will the boy manage to change the course of events and keep his friends by his side?

Mama

After many years working far from home, Mila is forced to temporarily leave her seaside mansion—and her secret romance—to return to her family in a remote Polish village. But the long-awaited reunion is far from what she imagined. As tensions surface, Mila struggles to repair what was lost, confronting the cost of her choices and the woman she has become.

Ona

My Mother's Lovers

Rafal takes care of his dysfunctional carefree mother who is more interested in men, pills and alcohol than in the problems of her young yet very mature son.

Tears of Neon

At the age of five, Chris, a young village boy meets his mother, Czesława, who is at the cusp of conquering entertainment industry by adopting a new persona - Violetta Villas. An unbelievably talented, ambitious mother and a sensitive child go on a decades long journey through Warsaw, Paris and Las Vegas.