A 40-year old actress (single and strong, yet lonely), her sister (an emotionally unstable schoolteacher whose married-with-kids life appears more orderly) and their domineering father, who gradually loses control over his family due to his wife's sudden illness and his own health troubles; these are the three individuals at the heart of this film, a touching story about the strength of family ties in a situation of imminent danger.
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.
Captain Roman Markowski is a sailor. One day, after returning from the sea, his ex-wife calls him. It turns out that their son has disappeared. It also turns out that the boy got to the Maritime School. The captain's life gets complicated when his son suffers a serious accident.
Takes place on an ocean liner from Canada to Poland. It is a story of several people with pasts and problems stemming from uncomfortable confrontations. The main confrontation is between a Polish doctor with a heart condition meeting a man he knew before. Neither of them was willing to admit their differences from the college days. The meeting torments the doctor enough to start him drinking and dying of a heart attack.
The story begins in March of 1968, the days of students protests. A hot- headed student protests the Dean's decision to expell a fellow student on fake accusation charges, upon which he drops out of university rather than make a compromise. He loses everything in the process: his girlfriend, housing privileges - he becomes a coal deliverer. On the job he witnesses an accident that causes death of a fellow worker. He decides to write a story, which is good and a publishing house wants to print it, but only after some corrections are made. He refuses again and the story is not printed. Finally, a story is commercialized and made into a succesful film and brings fame to the original author.