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.
During the rising of nazism, Sylvia, a rich but sterile woman, needs an heir to inherit her father's money. So she bribes Irene, a Jewish girl, to have a child by her husband.
A 12-year boy feels left out by his classmates because he has no interest in athletics. He finally discovers his calling when his parents take him to a magic show. Picked by the magician to be his helper during a trick he is drawn into the world of magic and wants to learn more. He becomes...
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.
Set at the turn of the century, the story concerns a Polish poet living in Cracow who has decided to marry a peasant girl. The wedding is attended by a heterogenous group of people from all strata of Polish society, who dance, get drunk and lament Poland's 100-year-long division under Russia,...
Włodek is a middle-aged man stuck in a dead-end job at the local library who lives with his harridan wife and critical in-laws in a small apartment. When Włodek draws the interest of a library patron, the beautiful young woman encourages him to strive for better things in his life and...
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.
A retired police captain, Siwy, tells a reporter about his latest action, carrying on his own investigation into the mysterious death of a Ewa Salm, a.k.a. Princess. She was a witness in a case where the defendant pled guilty and was sentenced to eight years in prison. Siwy doubts the defendant's...
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 pastor and ethnographer visits a remote corner of 19th-century Lithuania where folk customs associated with the area's pagan past still have a hold on the population.
"No one said life was beautiful." - hears business shark Andrew one day, learning that his shrewd partner and unfaithful wife have jointly let him off with his socks. Persecuted by a malicious bailiff, the heartbroken man is already considering saying goodbye to this world, when suddenly a crazy...
The main character is a bookkeeper, 40, who lives a quiet, uninteresting life with her husband and son of school age. She realizes that soon she won't be needed much at home as the boy grows up and the relationship with her husband crumbles. It's only when an embezzlement is discovered at the...
After completing a project, a shipbuilder grows restless and travels the country on his motorcycle. He leaves his wife as he engages in a series of drunken escapades.
An intimate psychological drama: the story of two brothers who, in the winter of 1848, waited for the opportunity to enter General Bem's troops in Hungary and experience emotional conflicts in a noble manor, which lead to a fundamental confrontation of attitudes and characters.
An actor returns to Poland after 12 very unsuccessful years in the United States only to find himself entangled in a noirish situation reminiscent of California in the 1940s.
Barbara is a forty-year-old woman of Polish origin living in Budapest. She is a biologist, a wife and a mother. The death of her woman friend opens her eyes to the fact that she is lonely, unable to find her place.