Discoveries from Poland World Cinema

Residents of the village of Wadlewo celebrate a double wedding, where a fight between Wojtek and Bartek takes place.

The four sequences in the film cover four days in a life of young Warsaw lad in September 1938, 1939, 1943 and 1944. In the first sequence Jurek decides not to study in the Sorbonne but enlists in a Polish military school instead. In the second sequence the war starts and Warsaw is occupied. In the third sequence he works in the underground resistance. The final sequence takes place during the Warsaw uprising.

As a spirited and inquisitive five-year-old, Basia loves to ask questions, chat about everything, and discover fun new activities. Along the way, she learns to identify her emotions and shows great sensitivity to her environment.

In 1924, the town of Stołpce was attacked by a Soviet sabotage group.

Malwina, the single mother of a young ping-pong champion, tries to rebuild her life after a divorce and a move by opening a pantyhose business at a bazaar. There, she meets Jacek, a salesman for erotic toys, and for the first time in a long time, she begins to feel something more.

Twenty animators from the U.S., Switzerland, Poland and China express their friendship with and love of animation in a series of animated variations on the standard countdown.

Jerzy Czachowski’s atmospheric and darkly comic short deftly explores themes of guilt and paranoia. An unnamed couple furtively bury a casket, only to have their secret exposed by a local farmer. From this sparse premise, Czachowski digs into Poland’s troubled attitude towards abortion, property rights, and heteronormativity.

Based on the diaries he has obtained, a young journalist tries to recreate the struggle of sixteen-year-old Hania with the German occupier.

Two soldiers spend their free Sunday in Wrocław.

Joasia fiercely pursues employment based solely on her professional skills, nervously rejecting crude advances and disguising herself as unattractive to avoid harassment. When she meets her new, handsome employer Robert Rostalski, she begins to regret her impulsive decision.

Money or goats? The unemployed residents of a Polish village don't have a choice. Instead of a cash injection, the Agricultural University of Wrocław is giving each of them a goat. This attempt to help people help themselves is proving to be quite stubborn...

The life of a female weaver is thrown onto the socio-political canvas of pre-war and post-war communist Poland through the use of expressive allegorical and symbolic imagery in this imaginative take on the documentary form.

A wino bumps into a 25-year-old man waiting at the train station. This accidental encounter turns into an escalating conflict and eventually the young man runs and hides in a public toilet.

Traveling among people and objects, we discover a world usually considered as ugly and unattractive. This dream-like journey is not a dream. Who are the people in this „big aquarium”? And what is our position towards them?

A man living a dream experience linked to memories of his childhood.

Twenty years ago five talented musicians decided to start a musical revolution in their native Poland and established a cult band. However, as time went by, their creative paths turned in different directions.

A unique documentary on the work of a legendary genius of theatre, Tadeusz Kantor. Filmmaker Denis Bablet traces Kantor's roots as a visual artist in Poland and explores his ingenious methods of designing the props which become living sculptures in his extraordinary theatre productions.

Five short documental scenes by different directors, each showing their different interpretations of "silence."

A cruel human cabaret begins with a pushpin that pierces someone's tires, a hole in the fence through which a voyeur controls others, and a cannonball that leads to the end of the world.

Marta works at her father’s automobile repair shop. After her boyfriend is arrested, Marta is faced with a difficult choice: to stay loyal to her father, or to do what it takes to get her boyfriend released.

Marek Hłasko, ”the Polish James Dean”, a writer and a reveler, comes to Israel in the late 1950s. This land and people become his inspiration, and at the same time a trap for him. He carefully observes immigrants who try to settle in a new place.

Mountaineering legend Denis Urubko shares his thoughts on what mountaineering is (or isn't). "It's important to get up from the table before you're full at mealtime. Sometimes people try to enjoy life to the fullest. And I'm afraid of it," he says in this interview given to Dominik Szczepański and produced by Jarek Tokarski for Duży Format.

Satirical animation showing the influence of alcohol brands on sports.

A brave little girl along side her sidekick chicken, a robot and a soldier go on a adventure in a stop-motion fantasy land to overthrow the evil Troll king and bring peace to the land.

„Broys” Filip and Bartek try to cope with adulthood. An unexpected family tragedy drastically changes the brothers’ worlds - it feels as if they came to a standstill with their whole lives ahead of them.

In a fairy-tale village lives Jakubek, a former legionnaire. He buried his wife some time ago and now lives with his adult but very shy son Janeczek. Three of Jakubek's comrades-in-arms also live in the same village: Kotek, Ingatko, and Gniewisz. For some time now, the legionnaires have been talking more and more about dying. Jakubek, the oldest of them, already has a beautiful coffin prepared and longs for death because he misses Brzózka, his youthful love, very much.

An idealistic scientist is encouraged by his wife to use his good looks to get ahead, but his new job carries with it temptations and traps.

"Legenda" is a document about a famous polish writer Stefan Żeromski. It serves as an interview with people who knew the artist.

The Ursus factory once covered 170 hectares and employed 20,000 workers, producing 100 tractors a day. Now, its buildings stand derelict and empty; half have already been demolished by investors with new plans. The symphony of mechanical sounds and gestures that is gradually built up throughout the film is produced by former factory employees. Proud of their factory, they reminisce about the huge numbers of people and the parties they had. They were a community, passionate about supporting agriculture through their factory. The Ursus tractor was well-known, not only in Poland but throughout the world.

A mature man recalls his youthful love and comes to the town where he once met a woman who was important to him. However, it is hard to turn back time.

Jan is a young assistant professor in chemistry and a workaholic, Anna is an unsuccessful science writer who turns to Jan for advice and human compassion, but Jan, absorbed with his career, remains immune to Anna's clumsy efforts to pierce his defenses.

Despite the fact that the film is a documentary, its lead character and his life story are fictitious, though very probable. It is one of the best examples of creative documentary film-making of Wojciech Wiszniewski.

The race does not begin at the start line, it does not end at the finish line either. The camera observes the participants of the Polish 4x100 metres relay team not racing, but getting ready for the race and slowing down after the finish line. The competition would not exist without the following stages: mobilization, full of anxiety, and composure of the red-hot organism.

The adventures of a motorized museum worker in a mansion full of free-spirited...

This year has not been kind to strawberries. At the beginning of April it snowed. Strawberries began to bloom on the 21st. The first fruit of the year was eaten by a snail, the second by Adam, and the third appeared simultaneously with hundreds of others. The rest is a story whose heroes are not Peter and Paul, although their interference in fate makes Julia's first kiss taste especially sweet.

A pair wander the streets of Warsaw, meeting famous Polish musicians.

Young man struggles with being rejected by society.

Many years after finishing their education, a colorful cast of characters decides to attend a night school to finally earn their high school diplomas.

Presenting a different approach to life, the three brothers meet at their father's funeral.

Set in 1952, film tells the story of young musicians playing - then forbidden - jazz music in basements and attics around Poland. The group hires itself to social parties, youth dances, etc, each time waiting for the management to disappear in order to shift gears to hot music. The crowd either loves it or does not know what to do. Occasionally they are harassed by the police.

A couple are put to the test, literally, when they agree to participate in a joint therapy session that will be observed by an international panel of psychology experts. Proving that they’re the perfect couple by repressing all their real issues turns out to be more difficult than they planned.

Second half of September 1939. Lt. Brejer, along with a detachment of his sappers, receives orders to blow up the bridge. The promised explosives do not arrive. So Brejer gets the order to withdraw and reunite with the rest of the division. Along the way, suffering hunger and discomfort along with his soldiers, he joins various divisions, collects survivors and fights. From a German prisoner of war, he finally learns that the Soviets have entered Poland. Finally, he and his men manage to reach his home unit, but that unit has just surrendered to the Germans.

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.

A young boy must go to school with his father.

Dialogue-free short detailing the daily tasks of a man and his wife.

The film tells about the life of Warsaw Commissioner John Blonda.

Fifty-year-old Roma is in the most difficult moment of her life. She has left her husband and has no roof over her head. When things get worse, all she has to do is forget herself for a while.

Pograbek is a village philosopher with an unconventional way of looking at things. He is planning on buying a child since he cannot have one due to his infertility. However, the woman that promised him one has changed her mind, and now the provincial gigolo is trying to make his wife pregnant.

The story of a man who is released from prison years later and must exact a revenge that is not obvious.

A young militia lieutenant goes undercover as a journalist to investigate a Zakopane smuggling ring.

The film follows warm-hearted journalist Judyta, whose simple and touching outlook - head sometimes in the clouds but heart always with her beloved - resonates with women of all walks of life. As she chases stories and love, Judyta learns that faith in luck and honest emotion can turn even the most ordinary days into moments worthy of a heartfelt song.

Jan weds his mentally ill wife Joanna at her insistence, but her increasing dependence on sedatives, and the clandestine extra pills supplied by Jan, their son Piotr and Jan’s friend Maria, leads to Joanna’s fatal overdose. Accused of murder, Jan endures a trial, psychiatric evaluation and deep depression before the case is dropped; only after reconciling with his children does he finally leave the clinic to return home.

A young nurse only has one ampule of medicine. She is faced with the dilemma of which of the two patients to save.