Janina Niedźwiecka

Drama about historical figure Barbara Radziwiłł, her romance with King Sigismund II August, her death and her posthumous return to Vilnius.

Two brothers of German heritage live in the Polish town of Poznan. Michal is the sensitive brother who likes literature, Andrzej is the daredevil with no intellectual bent, and between the two of them, they steal the German consul's Daimler-Benz limousine, on a lark. When they are caught by the police, the German consul unexpectedly forgives them their prank -- but in the meantime, the episode has put the brothers in touch with a Nazi underground group who want to prepare the way for the pending German invasion (set to occur within a matter of days). Andrej helps the group kill the German consul and then they blame the death on the Poles -- giving the Germans an excuse to cross the border. Not only the consul, but "artistic" types like Michal are also killed for the same reasons. After these murders, Michal realizes his brother is no better than the group he joined, and decides to set his own course in the face of the rising threat of invasion.

Set in 1944. A shepherd boy enters an abandoned palace he has seen only from the distance since he was a boy. Once he enters the palace, strange things begin to happen as though he was dreaming the events rather than living them.

Set at the turn of the century it presents a story of a famous Polish athlete, Zbyszko Cyganiewicz. It begins in a small town where a traveling circus attracts a shy boy into a phony wrestling game to please the crowds. The youth, however, takes his strength seriously, eventually defeating a name wrestler in a fair match. Angered circus manager fires him; he leaves happily due to two wrestler brothers who were harassing him. The wrestler goes on to fame, performing in the world's top arenas, and one day is serenaded by a tenor from the crowd. Fame brings him women and admirers but he is uncompromising on his profession. He has his revenge on one of his tormentors defeating him in the ring. One day, attending a game in a tuxedo, he is challenged by another of the brothers and drawn into a brutal game, in course of which he kills his opponent. Thus his career ends.

In 1931, just before the New Year, in a house of architect Henryk Zaremba scream rips the night. The daughter of Zaremba is found killed in her bedroom, obviously killed with a pickaxe. The police arrives and starts the investigation. Rita Gorgonova, the governess of the girl and also lover of Zaremba becomes the main suspect. Film based on real events - investigation and court trials of the most famous pre-war Polish murder case. Despite being historically accurate the movie is both involving and entertaining since the case was simple on the surface, but very complicated in details.

Nights and Days is a family saga of Barbara Ostrzenska-Niechcic, (played by Jadwiga Baranska) and Bogumil Niechcic, (played by Jerzy Binczycki) against the backdrop of the January Uprising of 1863 and World War I. The film is a rather straightforward and faithful adaptation of a novel by Maria Dabrowska with the same title. The plot is woven around the changing fortunes of a noble (upper-class) Niechcic family in the pre-WWI Poland. There are two main crossing threads: a social history one and an existential one. The cinematographic version is a condensation of the 12 part award winning TV serial of the same title and using the same cast and producers.

A young man named Josef visits a dilapidated Sanatorium to see his father Jakob. On his arrival, a sinister doctor informs him that his father had stopped breathing but hasn't died yet, perhaps due to Josef's arrival which may have halted time in the sanatorium. Josef undertakes a strange journey through the many rooms of the sanatorium, each which conjures worlds composed of his memories, dreams and nightmares.

The main hero obsessively wants to become an actor. The would-be actor fails two entrance exams to the state acting school and has a nervous breakdown. Eventually he commits himself to the mental institution where patients are rehabilitated by doing some artwork. He refuses to paint but does some acting. He participates in a play where a lead, playing Oedipus, actually blinds himself. Out of the institution he has dreams of killing his father, but finally seems to be ready to start over again and either act without the state license or take another job.

Two simple men win the lottery and decide to spend the money on their first plane flight and some other pleasures. But all that does not bring enough happiness to their lives.

Poetically shown story of love, passion, loyalty, betrayal of trust, and death. Three young friends travel round Poland and do the living acting out religious scenes and selling holy photo images at church fairs. Problems appear right after the theft of their camera.

Two guys came to Zakopane to write screenplay and make movie. They are complete amateurs and don't have any ideas. Maybe only one idea is to find actress, but it's not so simple.

An anxiety-riddled woman and her husband reside in a small, secluded house in the forest. They live a relatively peaceful life until one night when the woman appears to fall sick and die.

Jaruga, the head of the local Security Office, cannot liquidate the "Boruta" unit. Most likely, he has his man in the UB. In order to unmask him and liquidate the unit, Albert, an employee of the UB, acting in complete conspiracy, arrives.

An ambitious, enthusiastic young geologist is entangled in bureaucratic red tape when he tries to drill for oil. Frustrated with the situation, he torches an abandoned mill, ignores his girlfriend, and fights with his friends who do not share his exuberance about the project.

Disguised as an Italian medic, Dolas finds himself on a ship evacuating wounded Axis soldiers to Italy. He leaves the ship disguised as a Nazi soldier, but is found out, declared a deserter and sent to the Eastern Front. However, on the flight to Russia, he is able to escape with a parachute, and finds himself back in Poland, now occupied by Nazis.

After escaping across Europe from Stalag camp, Dolas's ride to Cyprus is stopped when his ship in sunk by an Italian submarine. Although he and some of his fellow sailors are rescued by an Allied ship, they find themselves conscripted into the French Foreign Legion in Beirut, Dolas becoming a cook.

On the night of August 31, 1939, Dolas, from a platoon reinforcing a train station on the German border, falls asleep in a train car and unknowingly crosses into Germany. The moment he shoots a German, who he thinks is a saboteur, the German invasion of Poland begins, and Dolas is convinced it was his fault. He is taken to Stalag POW camp, the first destination in his odyssey around Europe.

The Countess Cosel is based on the true story of the beautiful Anna Constantia of Brockdorff, a German noblewoman who became a mistress of Augustus the Strong, King of Poland and Elector of Saxony in 1704.

Two quarreling peasant families, who were forced to leave their lands after the war, are settled by accident on two neighboring farms.

Two handed chamber piece about a middle aged woman who returns from the camps after WWII and meets the mother of her deceased husband. Unable to explain the truth about her husband’s death, Joanna weaves a web of lies to comfort the old woman. In time she is forced to involve more and more people who know of his fate.

A pleasant, open-faced young man (Jan Machulski) comes to live in a boarding house with three peculiar women.

Ola, a local school teacher, meets Janek, a sanatorium patient, and his friend Ark.

A film grotesque whose protagonist is a poor clerk lost in the modern world. He buys a trumpet to express his personality via music.

Adventures of a two little girls kidnapped from their families.

An engineer comes home from abroad to his waiting wife. After some time, his second wife, an Italian one, joins him. For a small town, such a triangle will turn out to be unacceptable, especially since the spouses live peacefully under one roof.

Waclaw Orzeszko is unlucky soldier. Nobody from the platoon likes him. One day he decided to go away from platoon. At the castle he meet Russian soldier Marusia. At this time German forces came at the castle. They must hide. But there is also second problem. Waclaw's platoon had to find deserter. Polish Soldier close to the castle.

"Waiting for Godot" on ice and snow, without words. Against a barren winter landscape, a figure approaches: it's a man, pulling a small sleigh on which another man sits, plucking a dead bird. They stop to trade places; the one now on the sleigh takes out his knitting. Accidents, misunderstandings, disagreements, and an outright fight await our absurd protagonists as their trip to nowhere continues, first with one pulling, then the other. What if they were to lose the sleigh? What rules of civilization and partnership would guide them then?

Set in the Middle Ages the film tells the story of a wonder child, the little sculptor Wawrzek, who goes to work for a great master, Wit Stwosz. The story culminates in the unveiling of Stwosz's greatest masterpiece, the Altar of St. Mary's Church in Cracow.

Sampson is one of several Andrzej Wajda films harking back to his youth during the Nazi Occupation of Poland. Many of these concern not only the struggle between good and evil, but also between passive and impassive. The hero is a Jewish youth. He, like his family, has always been silent and undemonstrative in the face of prejudice. Now he stands up for his right to survive, and in so doing represents the fighting spirit that culminated in the 1943 Warsaw Uprising. It was originally titled Samson, but re-spelled as Sampson upon its American release to avoid confusion with a sword-and-sandal epic of the same name.

Fram is in a German POW camp where brutal, cold-hearted Gestapo officers like Weber or Von Steinhagen terrorize and execute their Polish prisoners. One day Fram sees a way to escape the camp and he takes it, heading out to find his fellow resistance fighters.

In this haunting short fiction film, a group of Jewish children and their teacher are herded into an ambulance by Nazis; the vehicle, ordinarily representing comfort and safety, becomes the group’s death chamber. Morgenstern’s presentation of the incident serves as a metaphor for the horror of the Holocaust, and provides a powerful trigger for discussion of the disturbing issues raised by the film. The figure of the children's’ teacher specifically parallels Janusz Korcak (1879-1942), a famous Jewish educator who ran an orphanage in the Warsaw ghetto and died with his young charges at Treblinka.

Drama directed by Janusz Nasfeter.

A reclusive lighthouse worker accepts the offer to swap jobs with a police inspector for a while, just to help him catch Teston, the so-called criminal of criminals.

Jacek is a handsome, charming young Pole who belongs to a drama company. One day, in the streets of Gdansk, he meets Marguerite, a beautiful, charming French girl. He falls for her but the young lady is whimsical...

Set in the beginning of Wold War II, when the Polish cavalry still fought with lances against German troops. LOTNA is about a white thoroughbred horse that passed through various hands in a military outfit.

Ewa Bonecka, a young student about to start school in a new place finds herself without a place to sleep after she is declined a room in a women-only hotel. Helped by a pleasant policeman, Piotr, she tries to find a lodging in the strange town full of thieves and petty troublemakers.

One day in the miserable life of a female factory worker and single mother of four children. One of her sons - ridiculed by his peers - leaves home and gets into trouble.

Poland in the 50s, 20th century The process of collectivization of agriculture is under way. The wealthy Slumdog farmer is one of the last individual farmers who have not joined the cooperative and are trying to grow their own land. But it is very difficult - the unemployed mercenaries who paid for them run to cooperatives (where they have better conditions), the environment or the local authorities do not accept him as a kulak. Struggling with the problem of how to make a 40-hectare farm last, he remains alone in the face of a loss of land that he cannot cultivate.

The struggle between poor villagers, who are eager to build a co-operative mill and a cultural centre, and the village wealthy men - the miller and the kulaks - who are desperate to stop the farmers.

Unvanquished City (Polish: Robinson warszawski, Polish: Miasto nieujarzmione) is a 1950 Polish drama film directed by Jerzy Zarzycki. It was entered into the 1951 Cannes Film Festival.

Battered Warsaw is getting back to life after the WW2 destruction. The ruins of the Old Town become homes once again.