Jan Grandys

Barbara is a forty-year-old woman of Polish origin living in Budapest. She is a biologist, a wife and a mother. The death of her woman friend opens her eyes to the fact that she is lonely, unable to find her place.

A young farm boy spends his days dreaming and making totem-pole like sculptures out of wood. His brother is a go-getter: studies agricultural engineering, comes back with diploma to marry the pretty girl next door. The dreamer graces puts his sculptures around, invoking anger of his father and ridicule of the peasants who find him useless. During the brother's wedding he sets his totems ablaze. He makes a pass at his new sister-in-law, but returns to his own reveries. In the end he hears a call to bring a log out of the marshes, but during the escapade sinks into the bog.

Police captain Wójcik conducts an investigation into the murder of a cashier from a state-owned enterprise. Despite seemingly numerous leads, the investigation gets stuck in a dead end – the victim had no enemies and nothing was stolen. Despite closing the case Wójcik feels that the key to solving the mystery is the murdered cashier and his past. Exploring this plot, he discovers a full-fledged spy affair, however, trying to catch the real murderer, he’ll have to risk his life, health and career.

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

Two friends from army meet in a harbour and start to reminisce about their adventures.

The life of the great Bolshevik leader before the Russian revolution is chronicled in this bio-pic. Much of the tale centers on his exile in Poland where Lenin becomes friends with two peasants. The little girl has a strong belief in the nationalist cause. Later Lenin hears she was killed for withholding information about him.

A young designer is tormented by remorse after the bridge collapses.

A group of people find themselves stuck in remote train station in German-occupied Poland. A drunk German station guard there gets paranoid and sees partisans all around him, phones headquarters, and when the German soldiers arrive and search the station they find a gun. They then threaten to execute every fifth person unless someone claims it.

To convince the prison warden against releasing him, a middle-aged Polish man recounts his life, one he considers to have been characterized by exceptionally bad luck.

Two zootechnics students, Jacek and Marek, come to the Bieszczady (it's the Polish "Wild West"). Looking for a holiday adventure and income, they become "cowboys" on local cattle grazing. Instead of the expected romantic adventures and the male, hard life, their boredom is becoming their share. Only when Jacek gets a stallion Szaga, things take a different turn.

Tells two tales set during WWII: A seemingly feckless and selfish finally takes up arms in the national struggle against the Nazis. Set in a POW camp, Polish inmates cling to their hopes for an eventual escape, encouraged by the legendary escape of one of their own.

Anatol Kowalski is an old man who works in a bank and loves his old-fashioned hat. One day the hat gets lost and Anatol decides to buy a new one.

Rumsza, the elderly railwayman, leading a sedate life with his wife, misses his only remaining son (two older boys were killed in the war). Joziuk finally returns from the military in the first scene but with the pregnant Zosia, while Rumsza expected him to marry Celinka, the daughter of Krywka, his only friend and neighbour. The hero will not accept the new situation; he throws his son and Zosia out of his house. Celinka is distressed but she still harbours hope for Joziuk. The birth of the child changes the situation: Rumsza accepts his son's relationship but Celinka decides to leave.

Three separate short stories about young athletes who lose their chances of success. Young swimmer - because of unhappy love. Boxer because of a fight with hooligans, for which the judges will disqualify him. But the cyclist must decide for himself what is more important for him: victory or friendship.

In the last days of World War 2, people of various ethnic background meet in a Polish military hospital in a small German town, whereas a Nazi SS division hides in the local forests and tries to move westwards.