Tadeusz Łomnicki

Stach is a wayward teen living in squalor on the outskirts of Nazi-occupied Warsaw. Guided by an avuncular Communist organizer, he is introduced to the underground resistance—and to the beautiful Dorota. Soon he is engaged in dangerous efforts to fight oppression and indignity, maturing as he assumes responsibility for others’ lives. A coming-of-age story of survival and shattering loss, A Generation delivers a brutal portrait of the human cost of war.

A documentary depicting the Warsaw district of Powiśle where time has stopped. One of several films made by Kazimierz Karabasz included in the "black series" of Polish documentaries. Featuring a commentary typical for documentaries of the second half of the 1950s, it is distinguished by penetrating observation and lyricism.

In 1668 Polish colonel Michael Wolodyjowski, who recently retired to a monastery, is recalled to active duty and takes charge of Poland's eastern frontier defenses against invading Tatar hordes and Ottoman armies.

A young doctor is tired of being sought by women. One night he meets a young girl who all but forces herself into his room where they talk of morals and love. But he loses her when he goes out to see some friends and then rushes madly around the city after her.

Lieutenant Mosura fights the groups of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army. Suddenly, he manages to capture and eliminate its commander. Several years passed. The lieutenant is accused of collaborating with the insurgents, because he took part in several terrorist operations in order to gain their trust.

Then There Will Be Silence

The Warsaw Uprising. Five people hiding in a basement under an apartment complex get buried by the rubble when it's bombed by the Germans. With no way of escape, the people gradually descend into madness.

A look at the poorest district of Warsaw. Targówek looks as if the war ended just yesterday - the place is full of rubble and misery, and devoid of any perspectives for a better future.

The feature film debut of director Marek Koterski. Thirty-year-old Adaś Miauczyński visits his parents, which ends with his nervous breakdown.

Stefan Starzyński, the mayor of Warsaw, organizes life in the capital in September 1939 and lift the inhabitants' spirits via radio announcements. After the surrender, he does not use his last chance to escape.

Dom starych kobiet

Warsaw Central Station, 1958. A place of greetings and farewells, an intersection of people from different parts of Poland and Europe. A girl waits in vain, she goes away. Soon the station would belong to the past too.

On the 10th anniversary of Nowa Huta, documentary filmmakers go back to the beginnings of the town's construction and the conglomerate, using archival footage from the Polish Film Chronicle. The city is born to the rhythm of seven days of creation, and the jubilee is celebrated by children - its peers and former builders.

Rewizor

Officers of the 5th Horse Rifle Regiment of the 1st Armored Division go to Brussels, where they meet Joachim Lelewel. To verify the story, the press officer of the division goes to Brussels.

A television short by director and actor Stanisław Latałło.

The first documentary realized by Danuta Halladin after her studies announces one of the main themes of her future films: children and childhood. Alone in the World is a story about orphanages.

Polish documentary about Armenia.

More documentary in its approach than dramatized history, this is a compelling story about a 1901 children's strike in Wrzesnia near the Polish border with Prussia. Poland was partitioned at this time, and a rigidly patriotic Prussian teacher in Wrzesnia follows the dictates of the Germans in parliament and insists that the children be taught their religion classes in German. When the children refuse to take part in the classes, they are supported by the local priest, but that does not save them from being beaten. They are also kept after school and tormented in other ways as well. Newspapers, parents, and the nation as a whole get involved, transforming a simple children's strike into a national incident.

A staging of William Shakespeare's tragedy, directed in 1969 by Andrzej Wajda. The roles of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are played by Tadeusz Łomnicki and Magda Zawadzka - actors who at that time gained popularity in the series "Pan Wołodyjowski". This perverse use of the artists' images by the director was intended to serve an interpretation of the tragedy that emphasizes Shakespeare's question: where does evil in man come from?

Witek runs after a train. Three variations follow on how such a seemingly banal incident could influence the rest of Witek's life.

A small village during the period of agricultural reforms in 1945. The two protagonists, a terminally ill count and his housemaster, engage in a private game that consists of artificially maintaining the social hierarchy which reigned here for centuries.

Bearing traces of the old Anton Chekhov play The Wedding, The Contract is set during an "arranged" ceremony. The bride and groom barely know each other, but this matters not at all to their tradition-bound families. At the last minute, the bride balks. Only slightly nonplused, the groom's father, a status-seeking doctor, decides to go ahead with the expensive reception anyway. Polish director Krzysz Zanussi uses this scenario to stick it to capitalist corruption, and to society's destruction of the individual spirit. Leslie Caron, the one recognizable member of the cast, is outstanding as a wealthy, over-the-hill ballerina who happens to be a kleptomaniac.

Three idealists - a communist secretary, a former RAF pilot and a female political activist - need to face the hardships and accusations of postwar Stalinist years before being finally rehabilitated.

A prosecutor takes on the case of a peasant accused of murder.

WWII. Zyga, one of the Resistance soldiers in Kraków (Poland), is arrested by Gestapo. Soon later with new arrestings comes out that Germans must have received some new informations. Zyga is suspected to become an informator.

Freed Polish soldiers are trapped in a small town in Germany during the last days of World War II. After a doctor's daughter is raped by a concentration camp worker, the Poles allow her and her father to stay in the house that is their temporary quarters. While waiting to be repatriated, the war-weary group is forced to fight some German soldiers who invade the town. The war brings out conflicting emotions of the Poles who find themselves trapped in the house and once again under fire from the enemy.

Master Nikifor

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.

A dream-like meditation on post-industrial life in Communist Poland.

The reunion of a group of former medical students results in a flood of bitter memories.

During the Swedish invasion of Poland, the brave warrior Andrzej Kmicic, considered a traitor to the nation, fights for a country, redemption and love across the 17th-century Polish territories.

After returning to Poland, the painter Aleksander Gierymski encounters a lack of understanding of his works.

Zofia, a professor of ethics, is visited by Elżbieta, an American researching the fate of Jews who survived World War II. A daytime classroom conversation turns into a night of confrontation, and Zofia is forced to answer for a decision she made decades ago that directly affected the course of Elżbieta’s life.

In war-ravaged Warsaw, five juvenile delinquents are given probation for stealing, to rehabilitate themselves, but remain under the influence of their profiteer-boss.

Fram is in a German POW camp where brutal, cold-hearted Gestapo officers like Weber or Von Steinhagen terrorize and execute their Polish prisoners. One day Fram sees a way to escape the camp and he takes it, heading out to find his fellow resistance fighters.

Antek is an inexperienced seaman favored by his teachers. On his first trip to the sea he learns the hardships of the work and almost causes a tragedy.

Two brothers of German heritage live in the Polish town of Poznan. Michal is the sensitive brother who likes literature, Andrzej is the daredevil with no intellectual bent, and between the two of them, they steal the German consul's Daimler-Benz limousine, on a lark. When they are caught by the police, the German consul unexpectedly forgives them their prank -- but in the meantime, the episode has put the brothers in touch with a Nazi underground group who want to prepare the way for the pending German invasion (set to occur within a matter of days). Andrej helps the group kill the German consul and then they blame the death on the Poles -- giving the Germans an excuse to cross the border. Not only the consul, but "artistic" types like Michal are also killed for the same reasons. After these murders, Michal realizes his brother is no better than the group he joined, and decides to set his own course in the face of the rising threat of invasion.

A peasant girl is abandoned by her fiancé after she has talked her father into giving her his land as a dowry.

Orlanda is a person between male and female. Their profession is diseuse, a performer who entertains with songs and speeches in the German tradition of the 20's and 30's. To escape from loneliness, as well as to play with taboos, Orlanda decides to marry their friend Elizabeth. On a concert tour in Warsaw, which also serves as a honeymoon, both the newlyweds fall in love with a young Polish man.

The main character has quit school, makes a living by taking pictures. He seduces a nurse who treated his head wound which he earned in a fight. They witness a hit-and-run driver killing a little girl on a sled. He builds up an elaborate trap by putting a doll dressed as a child down the hill in the path of a car. The man hits it and thinking that he hit a child - runs. Marek takes pictures of him and tries to blackmail him to use his car for a week. He wants to use the car to win back the nurse, who could not cope with his humors...

"The Dancing Hawk" refers to the son of a peasant who senses he can climb to the job in troubled times by playing his cards right. His slavery to work match his ambitions, and gradually he reaches the social position he desires. But the costs have included a dehumanized soul and a loss of a moral conscience. People have had to pay for his advancement, including those nearest to him. The downfall is equally painful: either imprisonment or the easy wasy out are offered as the alternatives.

Set in the occupied Warsaw, the film tells the story of the mission carried out by the student underground resistance group to execute the hated SS General Franz Kutchera.

In the rugged mountain gorges and ravines of southeastern Poland, a new boss and his wife become a catalyst for violence.

A moral story about two people who have completely different attitudes to life and people. The duel of the heroes ends tragically.

A serious Swiss melodrama/documentary about abortion, marketed as a sexy exploitation movie in the US. The film contains real medical footage.

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 young writer in 1939 Warsaw faces the conflict of acting his age or relapsing into childhood during the brink of World War II. Based on the famous novel Ferdydurke by Witold Gombrowicz.

Zbigniew Cybulski and Sonja Ziemann play lovers struggling to find happiness and privacy in overcrowded Warsaw. The movie shows an honest picture of life in a war-damaged city, contrasting the characters' difficulties with their dreams of a better life. It was banned in Poland in 1958 and would not be seen anywhere until its European release one year later.

A social drama that depicts a conflict between a young factory collective and a sympathetic but backward old specialist.

Pan Dodek

Akcja pod Arsenałem

In the eve of the Day of the Dead, among mysterious old rituals of the Vilnius region, ghosts of the past and present start to appear.

1944. Three wounded officers from both sides of political conflict meet in the hospital where the staff is politically divided too.

Follows the lives of people shortly after World War 2 as they try to adjust to their new lives. Completed in 1946, it was banned from release by the communist government of Poland until 1957 in edited form.

Miłość z listy przebojów

In occupied Silesia, resistance is organizing. In close contact with the miners and led by an engineer, a group of partisans prepare the sabotage of the steel combine. The going will be tough as the place is closely guarded by the Nazis. But despite a denunciation from a traitor and several violent deaths, they get going and the operation is a success. But the Red Army is approaching and now the coal production must not be sabotaged anymore. On the contrary, the partisans must prevent the Germans from destroying the steel mill and the coal mine...

Kontrybucja

The Border

Three women, ex-prisoners of a nazi deathcamp, decide to live together after the war.

In the last days of WW2, Polish military looks for the murderer of prosecutor responsible for storing Gestapo files.

A small-time racketeer Stefek evades mob bosses by passing himself off as a mentally unstable cleptomaniac and laying low in an asylum. The racketeer and his closest devotee escape from the asylum and find work at the opera. Stefek becomes stage-doorman and soon discovers that the opera doubles as a brothel.

Russia, 1870. A group of young anarchist revolutionaries set out to overthrow the Czarist regime through violence. Their attacks create a climate of psychosis and mutual distrust among the population, but in reality, both revolutionaries and repressors are being manipulated by a diabolical individual.

Tells two tales set during WWII: A seemingly feckless and selfish man finally takes up arms in the national struggle against the Nazis. Set in a POW camp, Polish inmates cling to their hopes for an eventual escape, encouraged by the legendary escape of one of their own.

A German woman on a ship returning to Europe notices a face of another woman which brings recollections from the past. She tells her husband that she had been an overseer in Auschwitz during the war, but she has actually saved a woman's life.

During the last few days of the Warsaw Uprising following World War II, a modest group of Resistance members remains. The band must take refuge in the sewers under the orders of leader Zadra, but it's only a matter of time before they will have to emerge. However, when they try, they are met only with intense hostility from the Nazis. Despite their attempts stay resolute through immense mental strain, it becomes increasingly apparent that they may be doomed.

Two-part biopic about General Karol Świerczewski, living embodiment of the party line, and the group of party members from his hometown fighting the fascist forces towards the socialist state of affairs.

Przygody pana Michała

The action of the epic film takes place in the second half of World War II. The plot focuses on the liberation of European countries from German occupation and the anti-fascist activities of the communist parties of these countries. After the victory at Stalingrad, a decisive turn occurred during the war. The main aim is the rallying of all patriotic forces, the creation of a national anti-fascist front in the struggling countries. The swift offensive of the Soviet troops, problems with the opening of a second front, major operations and the offensive of the Soviet army lead to the liberation of Europe. Rebellions are rising in different countries - such as the heroic uprising in Warsaw, in Slovenia, Bucharest and other cities. Brave heroes who performed immortal feats in the name of the happiness of mankind and freedom.

Christopher Lee hosts this horror anthology series from Poland with stories from various classic authors.

Originally made for Polish television, “The Decalogue” focuses on the residents of a housing complex in late-Communist Poland, whose lives become subtly intertwined as they face emotional dilemmas that are at once deeply personal and universally human. Its ten hour-long films, drawing from the Ten Commandments for thematic inspiration and an overarching structure, grapple deftly with complex moral and existential questions concerning life, death, love, hate, truth, and the passage of time.

Dom