Andrzej Szenajch

At the end of the 19th century, somewhere in the outskirts of the Russian Empire, a doctor administers a lethal overdose of ether to a young woman – the object of his desire. After getting away with his crime, he finds employment in a fortress, where he continues his experiments with ether to manage pain and manipulate human behaviour. Despite his evilness, it is not too late for his soul to be saved from eternal damnation…

A little known episode from the life of Stalinist security police office Julia Brystiger. Her nickname Bloody Luna was a reference to her incredibly brutal methods of interrogation. In the early 1960s, she appears in a centre for the blind on the outskirts of Warsaw, a place often visited by Cardinal Wyszyński, whose imprisonment in 1953-1956 Brystiger supervised personally. During a difficult and heated discussion with the cardinal, Brystiger denounces the communist ideology and begs for forgiveness for her crimes and for guidance in her search for God.

An account of the life and work of the Polish writer Stanisław Lem (1921-2006), a key figure in science fiction literature involved in mysteries and paradoxes that need to be enlightened.

Poland's winning battle against Soviet Russia as seen through the eyes of two young protagonists, Ola and Jan. She is a Warsaw cabaret dancer, while he is a cavalry officer and poet who believes in socialist ideals

A dramatization of one man's rescue of Jewish refugees in the Nazi-occupied Polish city of Lvov. In Darkness tells the true story of Leopold Soha who risks his own life to save a dozen people from certain death. Initially only interested in his own good, the thief and burglar hides Jewish refugees for 14 months in the sewers of the Nazi-occupied town of Lvov (formerly Poland).

On September 1st, 1939, Nazi Germany invades Poland, unleashing World War II. On September 17th, the Soviet Red Army crosses the border. The Polish army, unable to fight on two fronts, is defeated. Thousands of Polish men, both military and government officials, are captured by the invaders. Their fate will only be known several years later.

Two intellectuals, a writer and a director, begin to play a mysterious psychological game in a peaceful countryside manor house during the Nazi occupation.

On an ordinary winter's day, various people from outside Warsaw come to the Polish capital city for different reasons. They all have something to deal with, and their paths eventually intertwine.

The true story of pianist Władysław Szpilman's experiences in Warsaw during the Nazi occupation. When the Jews of the city find themselves forced into a ghetto, Szpilman finds work playing in a café; and when his family is deported in 1942, he stays behind, works for a while as a laborer, and eventually goes into hiding in the ruins of the war-torn city.

The biography of world famous Polish composer Fryderyk Chopin.

Adapted from a series of fantasy novels by the polish author Andrzej Sapkowski, The Witcher tells the tale of Geralt, one of a few remaining "witchers" — traveling monster hunters for hire, gifted with unnatural powers.

Frenchman Abel Tiffauges is a naive man who lives a simple life working as a mechanic. Falsely accused of being a child abuser, he is recruited as a soldier when World War II begins, but is captured soon and taken to the heart of Nazi Germany.

A film based on a Tolstoy novel about naïveté, idealism and love facing harsh reality.

Zanussi has described the film as his most autobiographical work. A young boy in post-World War II, Communist-dominated Poland, whose father's decision to remain in Britain after the war has made his family politically-suspect with the local Party authorities, is sent by his mother to stay with an "aunt" (in reality an old family friend) in Warsaw.

In a small Polish town in the summer of 1939, a married painter and a young Jewish woman begin an affair. Based on the novel by Marek Sołtysik.

TV movie directed by Maria Zmarz-Koczanowicz.

This sumptuously photographed period drama is set in 1791 Vienna. Maximilian Bardo, an opportunistic 18-year old Viennese man with aspirations to rise above his bourgeois upbringing, looks for a chance to shoehorn himself into the nobility. His hopes lead him to the castle of a wealthy inventor, Alexander Plant. It is here that a strange story is played out, as Maximilian, full of naive illusions and innocent ideals of what it means to be wealthy and noble, quickly loses his innocence. Falling prey to the jaded aristocrats in residence, he is cruelly initiated into their decadent games.

The story of catholic saint Maximilian Kolbe (1894-1941), who volunteered to die in place of a stranger in the Nazi concentration camp of Auschwitz.

A Hong Kong Special Branch cop and a CIA agent reluctantly team up to bring down a major international terrorist.

As high school students put on a politically-engaged school play, tensions begin to rise between them and their headmaster. The conflict seems to mirror the social situation in the 1980s Poland.

Based on a true story of a Polish musician who survived the concentration camp only because he could play on the accordion the title melody.

A comical behind the scenes look at the Polish Football League where everybody involved including the clubs’ management, players, and referees are trying to get some.

Polish film directed by Wieslaw Saniewski.

Made in 1982, shelved for five years. Story opens with Lucja Krol's husband under the tram. She gives birth to her fourth son on the floor of their new apartment. Neighbor Wiktor, a communist intellectual, befriends the poverty-stricken family but is soon arrested and sent to jail. During the war Lucja narrowly escapes a Nazi roundup at the black market. Her sons hold ardent Communist meetings in their apartment, with her blessing. Lucja works hard, but without complaint. After the war, Klemens is inexplicably arrested, accused by the new regime of being a collaborator. Wiktor, now a high-ranking party member, trying to defend him, himself falls into disgrace. Klemens is tortured to "confess" and dies in jail, a Communist to the end. Lucja is never told about his fate.

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 journalist is arrested for freethinking ideas. Goes into the cell with the famous safe-breaker and religious Szpicbródką Sixtus, a murderer husband of his mistress.

In 1969 a young writer decides to write an essay on a well known Polish writer, who had to leave the country in the 50's, later living, working and dying in exile. He slowly assembles the character and even the exterior appearances of his idol until his own identity tragically disappears.

A Pole who spent time in an internment camp during the war on the Swiss-German border, visits the site many years later and recalls these days. He meets with other Poles confined in the same camp, including several women, in whose he had romantic interests.

Warsaw 1941. Gestapo captures a Home Army soldier who knows the code needed to read the list of agents working in Reich. Tortured Wójcik asks the doctors for poison.

Set during the insurgency of 1863, the story focuses on a tragic romance between a poor gentlewoman and a rebel noble. After a bloody battle a unit of insurgents have been wiped out and only one survived, but badly wounded. He eventually finds shelter and care from a landsteward's daughter, hiding in a burned-out manor with an old servant.

In Warsaw in 1980, the Communist Party sends Winkel, a weak, alcoholic TV hack, to Gdansk to dig up dirt on the shipyard strikers, particularly on Maciek Tomczyk, an articulate worker whose father was killed in the December 1970 protests. Posing as sympathetic, Winkel interviews the people surrounding Tomczyk, including his detained wife, Agnieszka.

A two-part historical film covering the years of the First World War and the post-war period up to 1919 - until the signing of the peace treaty in Versailles near Paris. An attempt to show the great and complicated process of regaining an independent existence by a nation within its own state. The screen shows characters from history textbooks: Józef Piłsudski, Ignacy Paderewski, Roman Dmowski, Wojciech Korfanty as well as representatives of the world political scene, incl. David Lloyd George, Woodrow Wilson, Georges Clemenceau, Vladimir Lenin and others.

The main character, nicknamed "Teddy Bear" by his friends and acquaintances, is a manager of a sports club in Poland. One day he is detained at the border just as his sport team is off to a tournament. It appears that somebody has torn out a few pages from his passport. It occurs to him that perhaps his ex-wife has done it in order to get her hands on their joint account in a London bank. Therefore, he has to get to London as soon as possible in order to transfer the money to a different bank. The solution is taking part in a movie, made by his friend. The script requires a double role, thus the search for another actor is announced. The double has to apply for the passport, and that is solved through a girlfriend who agrees to play the dope's new fiancée. At the engagement party he is slipped a drug, and Teddy Bear runs off to the airport with the false passport. On the plane, however, he meets his ex-wife...

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.

The document describes the preparations and organizational problems related to the outbreak of the Kościuszko Insurrection and the initial phase of the fighting to the Battle of Racławice. He also devotes a lot of space to the peasant question.

Set in the late '20s. A thirtyish young man, who heads a small factory, faints at the funeral of a close friend. He decides to go home to his aunt and uncle for a while, but gets involved with a family of five women who had been in love with him at one time though he had apparently loved only one, who, unknown to him, has died since his departure. The women are mainly disillusioned with life or estranged from husbands while the youngest has a crush on him.

Modest editor, has shipped his wife and kids for the weekend, and is trying to relax in his house at the outskirts of Warsaw. His quiet evening is only disturbed by the accidental forecast made by a Gypsy woman, that at evening time he will murder a mysterious brunet.

Young former partisan recalls his war experience during a trip to the sea.

The main character is a bookkeeper, 40, who lives a quiet, uninteresting life with her husband and son of school age. She realizes that soon she won't be needed much at home as the boy grows up and the relationship with her husband crumbles. It's only when an embezzlement is discovered at the office and she stands up to her management, that she realizes life has more to offer. She meets a well-off former classmate, married to an American. Then she meets Jacek and starts contemplating possibilities of a new start. She discovers love for the first time, but turns to old ways rather than to break loose.

A young actor preparing for the part of Macbeth recalls his wartime memories connected with his mentor.