Piotr Cieślak

In the winter of 1943 two young Jews, Alek and Fryda, escape, via sewer tunnels, from the atrocities underway in Warsaw ghetto. Alek, entrusted with undeveloped photos of the horrors within, makes his way to a supposedly safe apartment only to find it occupied by Germans. Another tenant, a pole Stephania, abruptly offers to shelter him in her spacious apartment. She comforts him and they make love that very night. Stefania is uncommonly generous and willing to jeopardize her own safety by hiding a Jew. She even goes to a nearby church and rescues Fryda. But Fryda is ungrateful and proceeds to sabotage the trio's safety in insidious ways.

Janusz starts working as an inspector in a department store. One day he notices on the monitor a woman who is stealing a bottle of perfume. He resolves to let her go. Intrigued by the woman, Janek finds out that she is Monika Małecka, a leader of an influential political party, who is going to run as a party candidate in the parliamentary elections. The two develop a difficult relationship in which lack of trust together with neglect lead inevitably to its end.

An actor is married to a dancer whose drug addiction drives them to desperation when World War II breaks out.

A well-regarded engineer in a big enterprise is hounded by trumped up attacks on his integrity when he delves too deeply into how bonuses are handled by the management. He gets into an argument with the guard, is arrested and subsequently fired. An old friend, a journalist, tries to sort things out but the victim's stubbornness and past problems with his wife lead to lossess by both.

A former partisan now 38 years old remembers his childhood in the war.

Two psychiatrists attempt to save a suicidal man.

A young Polish filmmaker sets out to find out what happened to Mateusz Birkut, a bricklayer who became a propaganda hero in the 1950s but later fell out of favor and disappeared.

Andrzej Wajda's English-language film of a novella by Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski, aka Joseph Conrad, about a young man in his first command as a sea captain. A series of crises prove incredibly difficult for his new authority, for the sea is curiously becalmed and the crew is weakened by feverish malaria. When the first mate's fear convinces many that the ship is haunted and cursed by the malevolent spirit of the previous captain, the young man must cope with their superstition as well as the conspicuous absence of much-needed medicine.

Two years after the war, during a train trip, Henryk (20) recollects the occupation period. He passes different train stations and recollects various situations from the past: his family life, working in a garage, guerrilla warfare, the fear that accompanied him every day. He’s looking at the travellers’ faces, including the ones who have survived the war.

An acute case of Mondayitis in Warsaw. Interwoven stories of a few inhabitants of Warsaw, including one very unlucky Italian on a governmental mission and a charitable Polish American.