Irena Melcer

19-year-old Irena Gut is promoted to housekeeper in the home of a highly respected Nazi officer in Poland when she finds out that the Jewish ghetto is about to be liquidated. Determined to help 12 Jewish workers, she decides to shelter them in the safest place she can think of – the basement of the German Major's house. Over the next eight months, Irena uses her wit, humour and immense courage to hide her friends as long as possible.

Diagnosed as an autistic child, Grzegorz lives in his own, hermetic world not being able to connect with others. When he is a teenager, it turns out that the cause of Grzegorz’s isolation is not autism but a deep hearing impairment, underneath which a great musical talent has been hidden for years.

The peace of mind of a tenement house in Warsaw’s Mokotów district is shattered by the appearance of the alleged legal owner of the building. Using ruthless methods, the man starts forcing more families to move out. Janina Markowska is the most determined in her fight for the right to her apartment. When Janina disappears in mysterious circumstances, the police start investigating.

Nina, a teacher in her mid-30s struggling to have a child, looks for a surrogate mother. It would seem that together with her husband she has found an ideal candidate, yet Nina falls for the woman, who could have given birth to her child.

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.

Fine-arts student Zosia is a young daredevil mural painter who enlivens Warsaw with lovely graffiti. She lives with her mother Roma and grandmother Romy in a beautiful villa that has come under threat from property developers. Romy has long lost the deeds to the house. Will the women lose their home? And will they want to stay there once Roma finds new love and granny reveals a secret from long ago?

Three stories of immigrants trying to start new lives in Poland: an Afghan traumatised by the war, a Ukrainian lost in her own body, and a Belarusian running away from painful love. The Afghan, Azzam, works as a translator for the Polish army. In his homeland he is treated like a traitor. Having been evacuated to Poland, he is unable to shake off the war experiences. The Ukrainian, Wiera, escapes to Poland to undergo sex reassignment surgery in secret from her family. An unexpected visit from her father and little son will make her face the question of her own identity once more. Żanna, the Belarusian, leaves her husband, a dissident, and lives together with her daughter at her sister’s in Warsaw. She wants to move out as soon as possible and make a normal home. Things get complicated when her husband gets arrested again.

A story, warm and full of humor, about Maszenka, an 11-year-old girl from an orphanage in the Bieszczady Mountains who loves ballet. The first stage on her road to fulfilling her dream is the entrance exam to the ballet school in Gdansk. To make it there in time, she escapes from the orphanage, taking newly hired educator Kordula with her. They travel all the way across Poland, hiding from the police and meeting people who help them in need.