Discoveries from Poland World Cinema

The life of engineer Maksymowicz changes dramatically when he accidentally learns that he is terminally ill.

A 'creative documentary' about an Austrian skier who was known during the 70s. Examined from a biographical / visual standpoint.

To fulfil a last wish, an elegant widow accepts a ride from a modest retiree that will take them through mourning, music and new memories.

Wiktor Wiarecki is an unsuccessful writer. He is also not successful in his personal life: Wiktor's marriage is in crisis, and his adult son wants nothing to do with his father. The turning point is the death of his friend Wiarecki, an outstanding writer Stefan Przewłocki. A literary widow gives Wiktor the materials for the deceased's last novel.

A trio of lonely outsiders - a Russian knife-thrower, a prostitute and an accordeon player - establish a moving circus troupe.

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.

Roman Polanski lived in Cracow/Krakow during 1936-1955 - almost 20 years of his life. These years formed him to become one of the most popular film directors of the world. The title of the documentary refers to Roman Polanski's autobiography "Roman by Polanski". By the end of 1930's Cracow/Krakow 250 000 inhabitants, about 50 000 were Jews. It was one of the happiest time in young Roman's life. WWII made him leave the Cracow ghetto and he was hidden by a Polish family near the city. After the war till 1955, it was not only the hard Stalin's time but also the time when young Roman discovered his passion for art, especially the cinema. In these times he played in social realistic plays in Young Spectator Theatre and in puppet plays in Groteska Theatre, Cracow. Finally he left Cracow for Lodz in 1955 to study directing at the Film Academy.

The second part of adventures of Mr. Blot and the students of his magic school.

A dramatisation of the workers' protests in June 1976 in Radom, seen from the perspective of the local Secretary of the Polish United Workers' Party.

Emily, after a sudden breakup with her boyfriend, cannot find herself in a new reality. Without much consideration she sets off alone for the holiday stay they planned together. On the spot she meets Maria — the owner of the holiday cottages. At first, Emily gets irritated by Maria’s straightforward manner. With time, aversion turns into fascination. Thanks to Maria, Emily will never forget that summer.

Shortly after World War 2 a militiaman with the help of two Union of Young Struggle members wages war on a local gang terrorising a small Masurian town.

Anna gets released from a Polish prison on parole after fifteen years behind bars. Once free, Anna has but one goal - to find a woman whose name is Dorota.

A TV crew is to make a film about a happy family. The choice falls on the family of Adam Hyńczak, a well-to-do banker with a reputation for decency. However, in the course of filming, it comes to light that under the appearance of family idyll there are serious problems and pathologies. Both Adam and his wife, Magda, are completely preoccupied with their own affairs. They do not notice at all that something bad is happening with their adolescent son. Some time ago, having found himself at a bend in life, he turned to drugs.

Bartek lives in a village in the Podhale region, where he runs a small farm and takes care of his lonely and possessive mother. One day he meets Dawid, a slightly older man who comes to visit his family after many years of absence. Affection quickly develops between the two, followed by desire that Bartek suppressed for years.

A young landowner, fascinated by billiard, falls into the trap of gambling

A normal day for Kuba takes a strange turn when his uncle kidnaps him and forces him to join an eccentric group of conspiracy theorists.

Ludwik starts one of the best high schools in Krakow. His life changes with a growing storm of conflicting emotions. First love infatuations, sexual contacts, a rebellion against unjust authorities and the desire to imitate his idol, Marek, an older boy who who fought in the Warsaw Uprising in 1944.

When the elder brother, Andrzej, suddenly falls ill, despite their differences and a wall of misunderstandings that has grown between them, his younger brother is taking it upon himself to care for his brother in need.

It tells the story of the Warsaw Uprising of 1944 through the eyes of a US airman, escaper from the Nazi Stalag camp and two young reporters, cameramen for the Bureau of Information and Propaganda of the Polish Home Army. Their mission: documenting the Uprising by shooting newsreels for the “Palladium” cinema. Looking for the right shots, they go deeper and deeper – literally and figuratively – into the heart of the Uprising. Traumatic truth becomes obvious. Aware of being witnesses of indescribable events, they realize their duties: to document them and preserve the rolls of film at any cost…

Rumsza, the elderly railwayman, leading a sedate life with his wife, misses his only remaining son (two older boys were killed in the war). Joziuk finally returns from the military in the first scene but with the pregnant Zosia, while Rumsza expected him to marry Celinka, the daughter of Krywka, his only friend and neighbour. The hero will not accept the new situation; he throws his son and Zosia out of his house. Celinka is distressed but she still harbours hope for Joziuk. The birth of the child changes the situation: Rumsza accepts his son's relationship but Celinka decides to leave.

Tragedy meets comedy in seven stories about how our entire world can collapse at any given moment.

A peasant’s son rises through the ranks of post-war Polish society like none of his ancestors ever could. Moving to the city, he becomes part of a new socialist order. But in leaving his rural roots behind, does he also abandon his soul?

Warsaw, Poland. Kamil, a street rapper who spends his time going from party to party, begins a love affair with Iwona, a wealthy married woman.

August 2015, a courtroom in Rostov-on-Don. A man is peering through the bars of his cage, his eyes reveal that his nerves are about to snap. Today he will be handed down a sentence to which he must submit: 20 years’ imprisonment in Siberia for terrorism. The man is Oleg Sentsov, a film director and Maidan activist born in Simferopol in the Ukraine. He is charged with leading an anti-Russian terrorist movement and having planned attacks on bridges, power lines and a monument of Lenin. Sentsov defends himself, courageously and without flinching. He responds to the verdict with an emphatic denial of his crimes and instead accuses the accusers themselves ...

The world’s most talented young pianists compete in the International Chopin Piano Competition, held every five years in Warsaw, Poland. A rare behind the scenes look at the triumphant highs and crushing lows of competition, Pianoforte is both a testament to the remarkable power of music and an intimate coming-of-age portrait.

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 Poland - was documented on film in 1976 by the Oscar-winning director Andrzej Wajda.

In the 1940s, a small band of underground paramilitaries attempt to fight back against the Soviet-backed security ministry in post-war Poland. Determined to fight for their country's future, the group goes to extreme lengths to make their voice heard.

Ewa Bonecka, a young student about to start school in a new place finds herself without a place to sleep after she is declined a room in a women-only hotel. Helped by a pleasant policeman, Piotr, she tries to find a lodging in the strange town full of thieves and petty troublemakers.

Piotr quits his waiter job in Vienna to set up as a self-taught psychoanalyst “for women only” in his native Kraków, despite having no real qualifications. His clinic overflows with secret-sharing clients whose confessions drag him into tangled romantic entanglements.

Portrays the power struggle between the king of Poland, Bolesław the Bold, and the Bishop of Kraków, Stanisław Szczepanowski.

The film presents the last days of Gen. Sikorski, right before the Gibraltar catastrophe. The commander is accompanied by his daughter Zofia and a group of closest collaborators. They are all guests in the palace of the Governor of Gibraltar, Mason Macfarlane, who is supposed to persuade Sikorski to give back documents on the murder of Polish officers in Katyn. When Sikorski refuses, a plan of attempt on his life comes into action. Who stood behind it? Who executed it and how? Was Zofia on board of Liberator too?

On a global scale, war is always either further away or closer. In the film we see the tragic day from many perspectives. The narrator talks, looks through photographs and documents, and talks about other wars, about other children: Japanese, Cambodian, Balkan, Rwandan, Syrian. Documentary footage mixes with animation to create a kind of inner world landscape.

Nunnery. Group of nuns led by Mother Superior is trying to protect the sinful, corrupt world. Soon, a charismatic priest Francis will take a lead. He will open up new concept of God. ...

Edward is a perpetually irritable man - snappish with his wife, impatient with his daughter, and distant from his elderly father - until a serious accident jolts him into abandoning his old life to rediscover his family and the world around him. Without traveling anywhere new, he remains in the same apartment and neighborhood, but sees everything and everyone with fresh, contagious happiness.

As a son deals with his own struggles, he must calm his father's obsession with fishing before his outlandish behavior ruins the entire family.

On their wedding day in occupied Poland, poet Tadeusz brings Sarah, the Jewish woman he rescued from a Gestapo officer, to the celebration, only for her captor Cieślik to crash the party and force her into an impossible choice: become his lover or betray her to the Nazis. Filip Zylber’s debut uses Tomasz Stańko’s music and expanded characterizations to breathe new poetic life into Borowski’s terse wartime tale.

Francis Ratay witnesses the theft of church painting "Angel with violin". The entire incident recorded by an amateur camera. The thief turns out to Benedict Weber, gallery owner and art connoisseur. Francis comes to his gallery. Blackmails him, that will provide police record, unless the image in three days back in place.

When a policewoman is unfairly accused of selling drugs, her three deadbeat brothers come to the rescue.

Twenty-year-old Henri Rebecque wants to make his dream come true: to bring Benjamin Constant's Adolphe to the screen in amateur format. Armed with a sixteen-millimeter camera and a team of friends, Henri embarks on this adventure, playing the role of Adolphe himself. Despite all the warnings, he lived through the passion and ordeal of the novel's hero, right to the end. Different times and circumstances will not change this.

A boy comes of age under an oppressive, cruel socialist government and watches as it slowly but surely distorts his family, his school and even his own thoughts.

Outraged by corruption in his small town, a family man runs for mayor but discovers that staying true to his principles may come at a devastating cost.

An experimental short film.

Warsaw, Poland, 1953. Mr. T., a renowned writer, lives in a hotel and earns his living by giving private lessons.

The teenage siblings know that no one will give them a life more interesting than vegetating in a gloomy hole. They take matters into their own hands and organize a bank robbery, because money is their ticket to a better world. Everything was supposed to go smoothly, but then that fatal bad luck struck... Cop 1 isn't so bad: he keeps his wife in line because he loves her, he drinks because he's lost, he takes bribes because he needs money for booze. Cop 2 isn't bad either, he just supports Cop 1, who's in trouble, spiritually. Soon, the paths of the cops and thieves will cross...

Thirty-year-old nurse Teresa spends her days caring for elderly, dying people. Janusz, a young man she met at an amusement park, enters the life of this bitter and disillusioned woman. Teresa doesn't have the courage to tell him how she feels, and he also has trouble expressing his emotions. They are helped by Julka, a girl from the neighborhood who likes Teresa. She finds a pile of love letters from the beginning of the century in the trash. By forging Teresa and Janusz's handwriting, she starts a love correspondence between them, rewriting fragments of other people's confessions.

Guests from America came to Poland, and there were three of them. One, a businessman, intends to buy the land from the battlefields in order to cash it for a profit abroad. The second is looking for a wife in his home village, highlander, and the third wants to visit his uncle's family. Will their trip be successful?

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?

Two middle-aged male friends are travelling together by car and expressing their thoughts and emotions connected with women.

A Security Service Major wishes to "buy" gullible priest Zieja and turn him into an agent who will discredit the opposition. The priest's interrogations become a natural pretext for a journey through the history of Poland in the twentieth century: from the Bolshevik war of 1920, through World War II, up to modern times. It turns out that the seemingly naive Father Zieja is actually a clever rebel.

Januszek – the town's Casanova, returns from the army. Waiting for him at home is Blada, the mother of his future child, the daughter of the head of the local security service, who arranged for the candidate to be a son-in-law to shorten his military service. Januszek, who has had many women's hearts broken on his conscience, is not eager to get married.

Prominent cinematographer Christopher Doyle continues to hone his talents as a director with this thriller set in Eastern Europe and inspired by the as-yet-unsolved murder of a Polish politician in 2001. A young prostitute is spending the evening with a prominent Polish official when he's suddenly assassinated in Warsaw. In the aftermath of the hit, the triggerman takes the prostitute to an apartment and subjects her to a complex personality replacement program designed to wipe out any memories she may have retained about the evening's events.

Filmmaker Roman Polanski and photographer Ryszard Horowitz meet in Kraków, Poland, where, strolling the streets, they share memories of their childhood and youth, the hardest days of their lives, when, during World War II, they met in the ghetto established by the Nazi occupiers.

Karol has everything. He has three mistresses in addition to the bride. He is charming, loves sex and enslaves women in the blink of an eye. He's also well aware of that women like and uses it for his benefits.

When director Isabella Kolb learned that her great-great-uncle was imprisoned in Stutthof, the first German concentration camp established on Polish soil during the Second World War, she begins an investigation into his story and the camp's little-known history. Despite its significance, Stutthof remains one of the least documented sites of Nazi persecution, leaving families of its victims with lingering questions. Through witness testimonies and archival traces, the film follows Kolb's search for Uncle Edmund and the lives of those who endured Stutthof, offering a quiet reflection on memory, loss, and the lasting echoes of trauma that continue to shape the generations that followed.

A wealthy grandfather throws a party to celebrate his grandson's First Communion. Soon the family gathering takes unexpected turns.

Marcin Kroll deserts from his military unit that’s headed to the training ground. Lieutenant Arek is sent after him, tasked with bringing Kroll back to the unit before an official investigation begins. The officers fear a scandal: the inquiry could expose the brutal conditions in the unit that drove several soldiers to suicide.