Wajda's homage to Zbigniew Cybulski, the "Polish James Dean" who starred in the director's ASHES AND DIAMONDS and died young. The movie follows the tribulations of a director attempting to make a movie with a Cybulski-like star who never shows up.
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...
A man suffering from tuberculosis returns from abroad to stay at his brother's farm, hoping to make amends, while also beginning a love affair with a farm girl.
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.
A devout Catholic peasant girl is corrupted by two new friends when her family moves to the city. An allegory of traditional Polish values under threat from materialism and decadence in the post-Communist era.
Based on the novel by Stanislaw Lem (Solaris). The main character, race car driver Ryszard Fox, is involved in many car accidents. After each car crash he gets a transplant for one or another internal organ. After a while there is a question: Who really is Ryszard Fox?
In war-ravaged Warsaw, five juvenile delinquents are given probation for stealing, to rehabilitate themselves, but remain under the influence of their profiteer-boss.
Shortly before his death, Marek Edelman (1919-2009), former commander of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (1943) against the Nazi occupation, wonders about several basic themes of human existence in relation to the Shoah: how was it possible to enjoy love, tenderness, passion and lust while the whole...
Set in the summer months preceding the September 1939 outbreak of World War II in Polish part of Lithuania. A young highschool lad, Witek, is hoping to pass the entrance exams to the university. His love interest is Alina, his high-school colleague.
A ruthless woman's adulterous affair with a drifter sets in motion a chain-reaction of murder and deception in a remote village in 19th Century Mtsensk.
The hero is a Jewish youth. He, like his family, has always been silent and undemonstrative in the face of prejudice. Now he stands up for his right to survive, and in so doing represents the fighting spirit that culminated in the Warsaw Uprising.
The film reveals the mechanisms of the communist institution of censorship. Famous filmmakers - Kazimierz Kutz, Andrzej Wajda, Krzysztof Kieslowski, Filip Bajon and Marcel Lozinski - talk about their contacts and experiences with censors, how their films were censored, what parts were considered...
In the Shadow of Hollywood examines this assault on our senses through interviews with directors, producers, writers and other experts in the film industry.
The Dead Class (1975), by Tadeusz Kantor and the Cricot 2 company, is considered one of the most innovative and influential works of twentieth-century theatre. The breakthrough first version of the production - performed to great critical acclaim, but only rarely seen live by audiences outside...
In February, 1945, Primo Levi (1919-1987) and other Auschwitz survivors set off for home. The journey took more then eight months. Sixty years later, a film crew retraces Levi's steps. Levi's words, mainly from "The Truce" (1963), tell us what he experienced. In turn, we see Poland's hollow...
The film tells about the period of Polish history in the 20s of the last century, when the fragile government of the country fell, and a man of the people came to the fore. In fact, he turned out to be a cunning populist and an immoral politician, ready for any tricks for the sake of his goals.
