Henryk Niebudek

Political thriller is based on a true story about a young student beaten to death by the police in 1980s Communist Poland.

After 25 years, Franz Maurer gets out of from prison and came into a new Poland, where nothing is the same as he remembered. Who and what is waiting for a man who has done nothing for the last quarter century? How will he find himself in a world where old principles, roles and loyalty have ceased to apply? We'll find out this when the fate brings Franz and "New" back together. Their meeting will change everything.

In 1945, as Stalin sets his hands over Poland, famous painter Wladislaw Strzeminski refuses to compromise on his art with the doctrines of social realism. Persecuted, expelled from his chair at the University, he's eventually erased from the museums' walls. With the help of some of his students, he starts fighting against the Party and becomes the symbol of an artistic resistance against intellectual tyranny.

Helina, a modest checkout assistant at the Butterfly retail chain, dreams about getting a better life for herself and her daughter. An opportunity presents itself when Helina becomes a store manager. However, she soon discovers that the price for better wages and an improved standard of living is dishonesty, employee exploitation, and fraud.

During the Cold War, a local Polish officer and a young Soviet woman wedded to a Soviet officer are drawn together by music.

The film's heroes work in a company that distributes branded French wines. They are a group of friends, but their feelings are exposed to new attempts. Because in the world of salesmen there is no room for sentiments. Only sales counts, and everything can be anything. Piotr accidentally meets Irek, his school friend. Thanks to him, he gets a salesman job in Vinneka. She moves from a dilapidated bicycle to a company car, begins to succeed and falls in love with Monica, an ambitious salesmate who makes an instant career from the hostess to the head of the sales department. Young people soon realize that it's not easy to reconcile love with a career ...

Franz Maurer, a compromised cop, former officer of the criminal department of the Warsaw's police, is released from prison where he was doing time for his brutality and murders. He is awaited by Nowy, a former police colleague. Franz tries to go straight starting hard work in a steel mill. Nevertheless, he must leave the factory as a criminal with an uncertain past when he doesn't join the strike organized by the workers' union. At the same time, a merciless war continues in former Yugoslavia. Wolf and William, two high rank officers, come to Poland in order to organize a network selling and smuggling arms to Yugoslavia by way of Albania.

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.

Young people living in Poland in the late 1960s had to face difficult times and make tough choices. Some of them were forced to leave their country for having Jewish origin. And for political reasons.

Based on a true story dating back to 1985 when two Polish boys, a teenager and his little brother, escaped from communist Poland all the way to Sweden, hidden under a truck. In the movie, their destination has been changed to Denmark.

Polish film directed by Wieslaw Saniewski.