A young Polish filmmaker sets out to find out what happened to Mateusz Birkut, a bricklayer who became a propaganda hero in the 1950s but later fell out of favor and disappeared.
In Warsaw in 1980, the Communist Party sends disgruntled radio reporter Winkel to Gdańsk to dig up dirt on the shipyard strikers - particularly on Maciek Tomczyk, an independent labour union leader whose father was killed in the December 1970 protests. Posing as sympathetic, Winkel interviews the people surrounding Tomczyk, including his detained wife, Agnieszka.
Jacek climbs into the taxi driven by Waldemar, tells him to drive to a remote location, then brutally strangles him, seemingly without motive.
A German stage actor finds unexpected success and mixed blessings in the popularity of his performance in a Faustian play as the Nazis take power in pre-WWII Germany. As his associates and friends flee or are ground under by the Nazi terror, the popularity of his character supercedes his own existence until he finds that his best performance is keeping up appearances for his Nazi patrons.
A small group of cosmic explorers, including a woman, leaves Earth to start a new civilization. They do not realize that within themselves they carry the end of their own dream. They die one by one, while their children revert to a primitive native culture, creating new myths and a new god.
A famous Polish journalist presents a problem for the powers-that-be when he displays his full political skill and knowledge on a television show featuring questions and answers on a world conference by a panel of journalists. His enemies take away his privileges when he is away. The shock of being "unwanted" parallels a deeper disappointment in his private life: his wife has an affair with a jealous young rival, and after 15 years of marriage and two daughters wants a divorce. She offers no explanations as he tries to untie these problems himself. All the moves he makes are the wrong ones. He takes on drinking heavily with students eager to attend his seminar after discovering the class has been canceled. The journalist, once suave and commanding, is reduced to silence.
The film was inspired by one of the most important documentaries shot by Krzysztof Kieślowski, Talking Heads (1980). The director asked his interlocutors seemingly simple questions, such as “Who are you?” and “What do you want?”.
A story about women, set in the present and in 1950s Warsaw. Sabina, a quiet, shy woman who has just turned thirty lacks a man in her life. Her mother knows all about it and tries at all costs to find her daughter a good candidate for a husband. The whole situation is controlled by the grandmother, an eccentric lady with a sharp tongue from whom no secrets can be kept.
A Polish lieutenant from the Royal Air Force comes home with his British wife and faces political persecution.
Sebastien Grenier, a former French spy, is working as a financial analyst in Zurich. However, his peaceful existence starts to disintegrate when he is recruited by a top French intelligence operative to discover how one of their own secret agents was found out and executed in broad daylight.
In Stalinist Poland, cabaret singer Tonia decides to spend the evening drinking with a group of friends. The next morning, she awakes to find that, for reasons unknown to her, she has been jailed as a political prisoner. As prison officials interrogate, torture and humiliate her, she fights for survival and to maintain her innocence by refusing to sign a false confession. As her years of imprisonment pass, her relationship with her captors grows more complicated.
A mysterious woman recounts the rise and fall of Nikodem "Nikoś" Skotarczak, one of the biggest gangsters in Poland's history. Inspired by a true story.
As an aging woman married to a workaholic doctor by chance meets a young man who makes her feel young again. All of this is films by a director making a film about her which cuts in and out of the on camera and off camera drama.
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.
Tomasz, a doctor, and atheist, is diagnosed with cancer. His ex-wife offers him the money for treatment in Paris, but his lung cancer is past the operating stage. Facing imminent death, he questions the beliefs he has held all his life and starts experimenting with both his own life and those of others.
The world has been ravaged by nuclear war. The planet is frozen and radiation kills anyone or anything that ventures outside of 'The Dome'. Soft is a shepherd for the last remnants of humanity who have gathered together as they await rescue from a mysterious craft known only as 'The Ark.' He wanders among the masses, performing his regular daily tasks; keeping morale from plummeting, wooing prostitutes, squashing rebellions, and sometimes feeding the hungry. But as the true and sinister nature of 'The Dome' comes to light, Soft must ask himself if humanity is worth saving...
A Polish woman and a German man fall in love against the odds and decide to set up a cemetery for exiles. But can their daring venture survive the call of the toad? Adapted from Gunter Grass’ novel.
Three vignettes showing a marriage crisis and a subsequent divorce.
A journalist tries to balance the duties of marriage and motherhood while researching a piece on college women who work as prostitutes to pay their tuition.
Pernat finds himself in a police interrogation, accused of a murder, and unable to recall any details of the crime, or even his own life. He's released back into a world of raving lunatics and deranged dentists, murderous doctors and scientists who believe the secret of human creation is inside the walls of a cast-iron oven.
Difficulty of human relations in a 3-cornered tale: a neurotic woman, idealistic young man and his mother. Tomek is a clean-cut, high-minded geography student. He lives with his mother Zofia, a sensitive, practicing Catholic, like her son. When he meets Julia, a depressed woman older than he, he first tries to comfort her, then invites her to stay with him and his mother. Tomek makes a trip to West Berlin to visit his well-off father. He refuses to take money from him and looks for work as a house painter. Julia ends up in a rest home for treatment, while Tomek is trying to make their relationship work.
Zenon Ziembiewicz, a young, budding journalist, comes to his parents' manor house for a vacation. Here he enters into an affair with the lovely Justyna Bogutówna, the daughter of a cook. When the canicule comes to an end, Zenon packs his bags and leaves for Paris to study. Returning after a year with a doctorate in political science, he makes a fast and glamorous career. He becomes the editor-in-chief of the local newspaper and, soon after, mayor of the city. He also marries Elzbieta Biecka, but still does not break up with Justyna.
Tato is the story of a divorced father fighting for the right to raise his 7-year-old daughter. When his marriage falls apart, he decides to kidnap his daughter rather than let the court award custody to his mentally ill wife, whom he deems unfit to raise their child. But as he quickly finds out, it’s easier to be a real man than it is to be a real father.
The main character - a man who suffers from alcoholism - wants to change his tumultuous life. The day before Christmas Eve he receives a gift from his son - a yellow scarf. A gift is a kind of talisman he receives from loved ones, and every time he loses it. When after another banquet he falls into delirium, his ex-wife and secretary bring him to his mother. She helps him to sober up and arranges holiday celebration for two of them. She gives her son another yellow scarf, in belief that it will help him break the pernicious habit.
In October 1936, a high official in the Austrian government receives a letter from a German Jewish woman with whom he had an affair in 1925 asking him to help place an 11-year-old, half Jewish boy in a good Austrian school. Is the child his? Should he help? And above all should he help now, at a time when Nazis are becoming powerful in Austria?
Poland, Christmastime. A band of hyperintelligent, bloodthirsty Martians take over the country and enlist hapless television newscaster Iron Ide as the voice of their propaganda machine. But when Iron dares to go off message, he makes an enemy even greater than the aliens—the state itself.
An organised arts teacher has only one main problem in life, which is his father – a painter always going from one party to the next. When the father lives through his second heart attack and still refuses to change his lifestyle, Julius will have to find a way to influence his behaviour.
The film is based on the well-known, translated into many languages novel of writer Pawel Huelle. It is imbued with nostalgia and the atmosphere of mystery story of a group of children, fascinated by the figure of a man named David Weiser.
A tough cop but his life in ruins. His superiors are only looking for a reason to sack him. The girl is 17 years old and lives on the street. As the cop helps her one night, she steals his gun and flees. He should report the loss of his gun to his boss, so he has to search for the girl. At the Dutch border it falls into the power of the police! Henceforth they are on the run, without a plan and without a goal ..
Students from the Faculty of Acting find out that their graduation film will be made by the famous director Gajda. The news is electrifying – everyone wants to be in the cast. As rehearsals begin, the students’ personalities, dreams and ambitions are revealed
Set in 1905. The story focuses on a young and inexperienced man in a revolutionary execution squad. He does his killing job out of idealism, and for the love of a woman. The young student murders a Russian spy and is afterwards arrested by the police. Much to his surprise he is released after a session with the traitor-judge, hinting at some leaks in the organisation. Student reports his suspicions back to the organisation, but in response is given a new hit mission.
A violinist in a provincial Polish orchestra, whose husband is the director of the ensemble, on a visit to the US ties up with the world- renowned symphony conductor. As it turns out he was once in love with violinist's mother. The conductor, a slightly unstable hypochondriac, returns to Poland to lead the provincial orchestra. He also tries to revive old love affair using the violinist as a surrogate of her mother. Her husband is resentful of the conductor for both personal and professional reasons.
In 2059 scientists manage to revive two people after 80 years of suspended animation - a boy Marek Torlewski and a dictator Muanty, who quickly becomes a serious threat to humanity. Synteza is an adaptation of a novel by Maciej Wojtyszko.
The story about the friendship between two women, family problems and difficult childhood.
Anna, a nurse, meets her wartime lover Marcel in 1951. Learning that he has been sentenced to death for his role in the Home Army, she hides him in her cellar for five years. She gets pregnant with his child and has the baby out of the wedlock. Despite the hardships and gossip she holds much better than he. In 1956 when the political climate changes, he resurfaces and is arrested, but then acquitted by the court.
Anna, a stay-at-home mom stifled by the tedium of domestic life, becomes obsessed with Flaubert’s Madame Bovary and yearns for her own grand romance. In a bid to escape her loneliness she splurges her savings on fashion and cosmetics and arranges a secret tryst, only to find that reality can never match her daydreams, and she must choose between her fantasies and her family.
Loosely connected scenes in the life of a young student.
After watching a concert by a fledgling rock band, renowned songwriter Marczak decides to promote only its vocalist, Sylwia. The girl decides to leave her bandmates, including her boyfriend, Janek. She is to perform at a festival in Gradów. Marczak's ex-wife, singer Majka Lenczewska, whom he drove to a nervous breakdown, wants to return to the stage. Marczak asks Majka's current husband to compose a song for Sylwia. He agrees on the condition that the songwriter will not help Majka make her comeback.
Polish-born Russian subject Cezary Baryka comes of age during a tumultous period of ten years from 1914 to 1924, during which he witnesses revolution, rebirth of Poland, war with the Soviets and communist plots.
Rainer Dulsky, a professor of psychiatry from Switzerland, comes to Melania, the granddaughter of Mrs. Dulska. He feels he’s got something in common with the tenement house in which the Dulski family live... Melania, a film director, intrigued by her family history joins Rainer in his research. Their discoveries will take them back to the past full of secrets that were meant to stay hidden forever. The Dulski family have much on their conscience...
December, 1981. World-class champion Ewa Jaskólska is looking forward to a cruise around the world with her yacht. At her farewell party, several people are present that are connected to the new Solidarnośc movement. The guests are filmed by a TV journalist. The introduction of the martial law in Poland leads to problems for all people involved. Can Ewa go back to her home country after these dramatic changes in Poland?
Extensive dialogue and the tight focus of a single apartment setting marks this romantic and politically symbolic drama about Malgorzata, a Polish photographer (Krystyna Janda) and her married French lover Paul (Sami Frey). The two rendezvous in West Berlin to spend some time together before Malgorzata has to go back to Warsaw and Paul returns to his wife and daughter.
In a specialized, hermetic drama about love won and lost, not necessarily by the same individuals, novice director Christine Laurent has focused on the backstage melodramas of an opera company. The conductor for an upcoming performance of the Marriage of Figaro has his mind and heart on other matters -- an entrancing diva who keeps him enraptured with her presence and voice. In the meantime, he finds fault with his cast members who cannot, of course, measure up to the woman of his dreams. As singers encounter one problem or another, it is clear that something has to be done about the conductor. Director Laurent designed costumes for both theater and opera, giving her some insight into the venue.
Set in 1989, story of a man beat up by two ex-policemen and left to die in a dump. Marek survives after the brain surgery that leaves him amnesiac. He wanders through the city, sought by his assilant, who fear he will testify against them. Marek finds shelter with a girlfriend/bagwoman who supposedly was once queen of Paris boulevards. Marek regains his memory just as the villains are to get him. He eventually returns to his house only to find out that his mother died and his brother left for Australia.
In the midst of WW I, a doctor and a lawyer team up to turn a ramshackle old mountain chateau into a sanatorium/health spa that caters to the afflicted from most every stratum of European society, most of whom show up with false hope in their hearts and plenty of equally false identities. Even the proprietors have a few deceptions, chief among them is the part of the resort where they provide shelter for dying and horribly maimed soldiers. Still the atmosphere of this high-class convalescent home is that of great gentility that thinly disguises the seaminess of the guests' secret activities. Though much of the film is a quirky comedy, tragedy comes creeping in when people begin dying of unnatural causes, and not even the pure mountain air can save the owners and the residents.
The love story between a German cancer researcher and her Polish colleague that drags on for more than ten years. Both are married, which rules out marriage, but fuels their passion, as they only see each other a few days a year at medical congresses.
How was it possible that a single man influenced contemporary world so significantly? This film is an attempt to capture the phenomenon of a common man’s metamorphosis into a charismatic leader — an attempt to see how a Gdansk shipyard electrician fighting for workers’ rights awakened a hidden desire for freedom in millions of people.
Agatha is reaching her 40s, but despite her many romances she has not started a family. She lives as if everything could still happen. She works at Polish Radio, has published several volumes of poetry and is still ready to meet a great love. Boris, whom she met at the wedding of her young friend Sabina, is an architect, has a wife and two sons. He has never cheated on his wife and tries to be a good husband and father.
Jacek, an angry drifter, murders a taxi driver, brutally and without motive. His case is assigned to Piotr, an idealistic young lawyer who is morally opposed to the death penalty, and their interactions take on an emotional honesty that throws into stark relief for Piotr the injustice of killing of any kind.
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.
This film of a glitzy showbiz world by director Peter Keglevic in his first feature-length effort recounts the saga of a married torch singer whose numerous lovers are meant to steady her nerves and a saxophone player who loves her but cannot get his own act together. Singing and cinematography are pluses.
The unusual bond between a blind female writer and an acclaimed poet changes their lives and forms an exceptional creative cooperation, free of politics and the complexities of mundane life.
In Tuscany, Maria's stable family life begins to erode as her relationship with a young immigrant develops against a backdrop of terrorism and eroding democracy.
A handsome young chauffeur hired by a powerful and charismatic businesswoman discovers he has been made an unwitting party to fraud, but his moral outrage is complicated: the married man allowed himself to be seduced by the woman, who threatens to tell the man's wife.
Francois Korb is an arms manufacturer who sold both to the Germans and the Allied forces. Korb's home life is less than ideal, since his wife is having an affair with his brother, and his young son is inseparable from a teddy bear. To remedy the son's situation, the parents take in a little refugee girl as a temporary companion and playmate, and the two children become fast friends.
Barbara leads a stable life, is fulfilled professionally and has a loving family. Her foster daughter Alicja, who learns that she is adopted, decides to find her biological mother. When Alicja finds the real mother, the life of the main characters changes, and the positive relationships that linked them become blurred.
Fleeing from despair after losing those dearest to him, the hero hides in a safe land of memories, where time stands still and all those dear to him are alive.
A 2005 novella film created to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Solidarity movement. It consists of 13 10-minute shorts. There are various forms: mini-feature, music video, documentary, animation, interview.
In this documentary, Andrzej Wajda presents a biography of the famous filmmaker and his long-time collaborator, Edward Klosinski. He was an outstanding cinematographer. Among others, his wife Krystyna Janda and closest friends, as well as the director himself, talk about his extraordinary work. The film also uses excerpts from many major productions that Klosinski took part in creating.
Biographical documentary film presenting the silhouette and artistic path of the outstanding actor Daniel Olbrychski. The narrative of the main character is confronted with his colleagues and friends, in contemporary interviews, including: with Krystyna Janda, Jerzy Hoffman, Krzysztof Zanussi, Volker Schlondorff and Adam Michnik. The archival materials will include statements and excerpts from the realization of scenes from Andrzej Wajda's films. The film roles of the main character are intertwined with his private life.
Wealthy merchant Stanislaw Wokulski falls tragically in love with beautiful yet vain Izabela Lecka. His unfulfilled love leads to many foolish decisions sealing his fate.
A moving documentary depicting a recent and very candid interview with Wojciech Mlynarski, in which we learn about previously unknown archival photographs and music videos. The film is complemented by more than 30 statements from his closest friends who collaborated with the artist on many occasions: Janusz Gajos, Janusz Glowacki , Jerzy Derfl, Janusz Senta, Wlodzimierz Korcz, Ewa Bem, Janusz Stoklosa, Irena Santor, Michal Bajor, Magda Zawadzka, Krystyna Janda, Family and those who worked with and for him: prominent composers, actors, singers. This extraordinary film shows the true face and difficulties that Wojciech Mlynarski faced, not only as an artist, but also as a person.