Discoveries from Poland World Cinema

Plot under wraps.

A man consumed by guilt because he did not dare to defend his mother, he plays the role of a murderer and forces ten-year-old self to face trauma.

Animated parable in which a man chases after an unreachable point.

Ania is an apprentice at a small hairdressing parlour along with her best friend, Kasia. The two teenage girls from dysfunctional families share a common dream of becoming professional hair stylists.

On the day Andrzej graduates from police academy and receives his officer's stripes, his father, a senior police officer, is murdered. Andrzej, assigned to the investigative brigade, tries to find the murderer, who turns out to be a member of an international gang of counterfeiters. The mysterious ringleader resorts to the help of Janina, an innocent girl who has nothing to do with the criminals. He blackmails her into pretending to be in love with Andrzej and extracting the necessary information from him. But the girl falls in love for real, and he falls in love with her too...

The startling story of Ryszard Siwiec, a man who, on a Polish national holiday in September 1968, immolated himself in front of thousands of people in a stadium in Warsaw.

A day and night of the life of a boy who comes back from the States to his hometown. After a few years’ emigration for money, he intends to start up the business of his life. He has the know-how and dollars for a start. However, will Marcin manage to rebuild his relationship with his old love, Krysia?

A former inmate of the Auschwitz concentration camp, accused of being a kapo, is serving a life sentence. From the monologue to the camera, we learn the story of an average man destroyed in terrible times.

An unknown real story of a Haitian vodou priest, Amon Frémon, who visited the People’s Republic of Poland in 1980. A metaphysical view on time of socialism through the eyes of a stranger form a different culture.

Yesterday, today, tomorrow. The days pass, and so does life. Watching the waves to come and go, Laurence compiles sharp fragments of her life. This is an intimate and delicate portrait of a woman, who after all the struggles knows when the most important of all days is.

At the close of the Russian campaign, Polish soldier Zbig and Hungarian Bodenei, fleeing toward the Polish border, reach the village of Miłojec where Zbig forms a bond with Basia. Their brief refuge shatters when a Russian patrol arrives and massacres a group of retreating soldiers.

A film portrait of Eva Rubinstein, artist, photographer, and daughter of Arthur Rubinstein, made during one of her stays in Poland in the 1980s. A citizen of the world who feels an extraordinary bond with Łódź.

It’s the last day of school, but Ewa, a 40-year old teacher, has no plans for the summer holidays.

Former soldier take up a fight with a bunch who attacks his home village

Bailiffs are people who collect material goods according to the court judgements. In bureaucratic communism, they become ruthless instruments of power, who sometimes resort to violence and don't care about human suffering.

Polish director, his wife and children are leaving Siberia for Argentina. For their little son, this trip will not only be an encounter with an unknown language. Influenced by their Argentinian friend, Janek enters the fascinating world of imagination, and is introduced to the bitterness of childhood prematurely contaminated by the problems of grown-ups.

A murder occurs in a small village, shocking the local community. The locals live in seclusion, disliking outsiders. However, the murder brings in a homicide detective who gradually uncovers the secrets behind the crime.

A nostalgic tale about people separated from their "roots". Its protagonists are Ukrainians, the inhabitants of the Bieszczady Mountains, forced to migrate to another region of the country.

Anka is becoming extremely anxious about her beloved husband Witek, a war correspondent. But where does the border lie between reality and catastrophic visions?

The protagonist of the story is Rysiek, who, after serving a prison sentence in the Nysa Penitentiary, returns to his hometown with the intention of starting a new life. He wants to run the farm taken over from his deceased parents and win back his ex-girlfriend, Agata, who, in his absence, married his older brother, Jarek. The situation is further complicated by the person of Tadek. As it turns out, Rysiek and Tadek are not only connected by former criminal activity, but also by Agata...

A young swimmer's life changes drastically when she begins to suspect that what she loves most is actually her greatest threat.

As a result of a mistake, the siblings change roles and go on vacation somewhere else than planned. The boy goes to his aunt and cousins, the girl goes to her uncle and cousins. To save her brother, the sister pretends to be a boy and he, left with no choice, pretends to be a girl.

Rex and the cat are friends. Unfortunately, the cat wants to hunt the bird – a friend of Rex. In order to prevent that, the dog and the bird prepare some traps for the cat, they use a bucket of cold water and a rubbish bin.

By recreating personal stories though testimony, poetry and archival material, the artist and performers explore deep traumas that no single place or language can contain. Abkhazia, the disputed state on the Black Sea – once an opulent Soviet holiday resort with a multi-ethnic population – became a symbolic ghost town following the 1992-93 war with Georgia. Here, fragmented memories and dreams destroyed by violence and exile are exhumed through interpretive re-enactment and haunting sound.

Boxing match. Full stands. The fight is about to begin. The hall is filled with a bustling audience. We see fans: men, women and children. Everyone is craning their necks with interest to get a better view of the fight. Their faces show emotions of tension, joy, disappointment.

Poor musician Alojzy Kędziorek is in love with Sagankiewicz's daughter Renata, who is reciprocated, but her family wants to marry her off to the wealthy butcher Baleron. Hipek, Alojzy's friend, sells his song to the theater director. The song becomes a huge hit. Alojzy is mistakenly locked up in a newly opened psychiatric hospital. He manages to escape. He goes to the theater where his song is being sung. He receives thunderous applause and an order for new songs. Renata's family agrees to her marriage to Kędziorek.

The deputy director of a machine plant is injured in a car accident and loses important documents. An uncompromising controller is sent to the plant to investigate the matter.

A mysterious figure leaves the Tower of Babel. It looks for the truth, it looks for life, it joins feasters and people working in the field. The animation is based on Pieter Bruegel’s style of painting.

Unique archives show a world that no longer exists: pre-war Poland in which two cultures: Jewish and Polish, coexisted wall-in-wall; cottage in a cottage; town next to town. "Po-lin" - meaning "we will stop here" in Yiddish - does not deny the painful past. It only shows that there was something more next to them. Worth remembering and - perhaps - reconstruction.

Shickman, the film’s central subject, has been living in Phnom Penh, Cambodia for 8 years along with his baby’s mama, Saran. He is the soul provider of the pair and earns his meager living by reading tarot cards street side. Saran is Cambodian, drinks often, was once married to a man of which she had several kids with (all but one are in foster care). Aside from having to contend with each other, the two must also be weary of the human vultures that eye their daughters with hopes of turning a profit on the black market. Surely, the future for these people are a bleak one.

Powerful clutches, full concentration, sweat, a blanket and a bicycle. No head start. Two brothers and two paths that cross one evening, extremely important for the younger one. Kuba is preparing for his first half-professional wrestling fight. Unexpectedly, his elder brother comes to his aid. However, his intentions are not entirely selfless.

A daughter of a furniture seller helps her father’s business by promising a marriage to the customers.

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.

Anna, a young and beautiful woman, takes lonely walks along the beach, when one day she attracts the attention of Jan, a film director.

A bleak tale of an affair between an actress and a Russian officer, based on the real story of the affair between Maria Wisnowska and Aleksandr Barteniew.

Three radically different protagonists, with polar opposite political views, try to define their identities against the background of contemporary Poland. They are at turning points of their lives. The woman has an abortion. One man is getting more politically radical and joins a right-wing party. The other man breaks his ties with the Church and chooses apostasy. Even though they could not be more different in terms of their worldviews, they have one thing in common – each of them is trying to embrace their own uniqueness and understand who they are.

Two men are having a conversation about life and transience. One of them is terminally ill.

Full of archival flavors, the story of an aristocrat cursed by his family, a man of many faces and talents living in turbulent times. Who was August Zamoyski? A lover of female beauty, an athlete, a sculptor, and a citizen of the world who draws full attention from life?

Baths takes us into the murky waters of fantasy. With a cool kind of magic, this delicately stylized film draws us into various layers of reality, as we plunge from silent melancholia into the graphic frenzy of competitive sports, where everything is turned upside down. The notion of the flipside of reality is taken literally here.

Three friends sign up for a poker match full of intensity, betrayal and money

A genius and also a madman, Dr. La Morte - a person who sincerely hates Poland - fanatically wants to launch our country into space. This is because he considers Poland an unnecessary country on the map of the modern world, mainly due to the lack of great achievements of its inhabitants in any field of art or science. To fight the doctor stands, of course, Engineer Walczak - a great, dedicated patriot.

Niko lives with his father, who treats frogs better than he treats his own son. These slimy green creatures are the reason Niko can no longer tell the difference between reality and dreams.

A Japanese man dying of radiation sickness recalls his love for a Polish woman he met in Paris.

Hamlet suspects his uncle has murdered his father to claim the throne of Denmark and the hand of Hamlet's mother, but the prince cannot decide whether or not he should take vengeance.

Aniela, a sculpture student, suffers from skin picking disorder. When her art gets challenged, her condition deepens and gets more bizarre.

A rainy-night clash in a boarding-school dorm forces a swaggering teen to confront his insecurities and the price of rebellion.

This documentary shows the birth of a 10,000-ton ship called "Phenian" (the deadweight tonnage of this cargo ship is 10,000 tons). The film is devoid of commentary, which emphasizes the importance of the forms and the almost mystical nature of the "birth" of the ship.

"Mieso" (Meat) is a satirical and irreverent revision of the most recent history of Poland.

An animation describing the madness of war, which runs forward like an unleashed dog. The passing time explodes with blood until history comes full circle and gradually fades away.

This documentary promotes the new post-war social and political order in Poland and condemns people opposed to the people's rule.

A river is a woman, or rather it has the face of many women that form a Polish collective saving natural watercourses. The participants of the campaign protest against river regulation and concrete embankments, i.e. against the destruction of entire ecosystems. They organise happenings on the water, sew and sport bathing costumes with a pro-river message embroidered on them, which enables them to get the media attention. This is how the River Sisters campaign arouses social awareness about such natural treasures as the Vistula, the Nida, the Dunajec or the Tarnawka Rivers.

The film shows the process of evoking feelings and searching for landscape specificity by recounting events which have taken place in the scenery.

How does the relationship between animals differ from the relationship between humans and animals? – this is asked by the creators of the sixth choreographic film project by the Polish Dance Theatre

Agnes and Lucek take out a loan to buy an apartment. While paying it off, they grow further and further apart.