Andrzej Mastalerz

Peasant girl Jagna is forced to marry the much older, wealthy farmer Boryna, despite her love for his son Antek. With time, Jagna becomes the object of envy and disdain with the villagers and she must fight to preserve her independence.

A dramatization of one man's rescue of Jewish refugees in the Nazi-occupied city of Lviv. In Darkness tells the true story of Leopold Soha who risks his own life to save a dozen people from certain death. Initially only interested in his own good, the thief and burglar hides Jewish refugees for 14 months in the sewers of the Nazi-occupied town of Lviv (formerly Poland).

A Jewish boy separated from his family in the early days of WWII poses as a German orphan and is taken into the heart of the Nazi world as a 'war hero' and eventually becomes a Hitler Youth.

Fear, anger, sadness, joy, disgust, envy, shame. Adaś Miauczyński goes back to his childhood days when, like most of us, he used to find it problematic to name the emotions that accompanied him. To improve the quality of his adult life, he decides to return to that time – which proves not so carefree after all – to learn how to experience the seven basic emotions. This extremely unpredictable journey into the past features an abundance of hilarious, even comical, situations but is also filled with lots of touching moments and food for thought.

The story of catholic saint Maximilian Kolbe (1894-1941), who volunteered to die in place of a stranger in the Nazi concentration camp of Auschwitz.

Military doctor Kwiatkowski, serving in a barracks hospital on the Western Territories, is rewarded with a week’s leave after successfully operating on Colonel Kiziora of the UB. He and his friend steal a truck bound for Warsaw, where among the ruins of his former home he meets his prewar neighbor Krysia, instantly falls in love, and, after a brawl with a Russian officer at a dance in the surviving “Polonia” hotel, pretends to be a high-ranking UB colonel to save face.

Baska runs a catering company from home. In addition, she takes care of three children and takes care of her husband, Kacper, who constantly works overtime in the office. Somewhere she lost her spark and zest for life. When she meets the handsome and famous choreographer Jim at work, her life turns upside down. Jim helps Baska gain new clients and her business flourishes. Baska is also blooming. However, her home life suffers. In addition, Kacper begins to suspect Baska of having an affair and demands a divorce. Baska must decide whether she wants to start her life anew or return to what she has built over the years.

A young scientist becomes a victim of his own experiment. Andrzej Majer, a psychiatrist, decides to go to a psychiatric hospital for three months as a patient in order to learn the secrets of his profession.

Jacek, an angry drifter, murders a taxi driver, brutally and without motive. His case is assigned to Piotr, an idealistic young lawyer who is morally opposed to the death penalty, and their interactions take on an emotional honesty that throws into stark relief for Piotr the injustice of killing of any kind.

Two brothers are trying to find out the truth from years ago. The whole town is against them.

Agata, an internationally celebrated volleyball star, falls head over heels for Jacek and dreams of a fairy-tale life, complete with a beautiful wedding, children, and a mountain home. When a single phone call shatters their plans, she must race against time to fight for herself, the man she loves, and the child she yearns for, testing whether love can truly endure.

It is a bitter story about a middle-aged man, who hates his life and other people, including himself. Adam Miauczynski, the character known from director Marek Koterski's previous films, is a 49 year-old teacher, who reads poetry during school lessons and later goes home swearing and calling his neighbours' names. The worst pain for him is the next 5 minutes of living. He doesn't accept himself and even everyday contacts with others cause his aggression. Though constantly dreaming of a romantic love, he is not bold enough to make his dreams come true. The desperate Miauczynski personalizes our own fears and obsessions, which have become so visible recently.

A commune built around the pursuit of spiritual perfection through the occult begins to see its prophecies come true.

Christmas is coming. Little Ania dreams of a doll she saw in a shop window.

11-year-old Mickey House is no longer a child. But who is he? He doesn’t know. He’s friendless. He doesn’t understand his mother. He hates what’s happening to his body. Reality and imagination come together in a toxic mix. Events escalate to extremes… at home and at school. Mickey has to find the strength within him to put a stop to what’s begun. Where will his encounter with his own maturing body take him?

In the beginning of the Second World War, Germans, Austrians and persons without nationality living in France are sent to the concentration camp of Les Milles by France government. Commander Charles Perrochon is the responsible for this camp and he promises to the leaders of the prisoners to protect them from the Nazis. When France is invaded by the Germans, Commander Perronchon will disobey orders and his superiors trying to save these men. He gets a train, a ship and money from USA to send about eight hundred of these prisoners to the safety of Casablanca, in Marrocos.

To be defeated and not be - a victory. This is the motto that life is guided by three young friends: Alek, Sophy and Rudy. Scouts, high school graduates high school in Warsaw drifting ambitious plans for the future broken through September 1939. Entering adulthood in a very dramatic times, which puts them a choice - to survive at any cost, or to join the fighting for a free homeland, risking everything. The boys brought up in patriotic homes, shaped by the ideals of scouting, they decide to fight. They become soldiers, and although every scrape with death, they can live a full life.

Polish rebel Rafal Wojaczek writes poetry and lives life on the edge before his suicide in 1971.

Early 1960s. Four friends, Admiral, Ataman, Pasha and Chief, walk the streets of the town all day or sit at the train station, wallowing in their dreams. Everything changes when the Admiral meets Marta, a student on an internship. The boy begins to prefer the company of the girl over that of his colleagues. This becomes the cause of misunderstandings between friends. Soon, however, Marta leaves.

Giza and her husband Erwin struggle to make ends meet in their Silesian mining-town home after Erwin loses his job and faces humiliating demands at the employment office. When Giza befriends the well-off Monika, she’s offered work at a nightclub - first cleaning, then a shocking ultimatum: turn to prostitution or leave.

No description available.

In the spring of 1945, the commanding officer of the National Armed Forces in Mazowsze and older brother of 20-year-old Mieczyslaw Dziemieszkiewicz, is assassinated by Soviet soldiers. Mieczyslaw then joins the National Military Union. He becomes the commander of a partisan unit fighting for the next six years to free Poland from Soviet tyranny by terrorizing the UB and its collaborators. Communist authorities will do whatever it takes to track down the "enemy of the people's power."

Marcin Krysztalowicz's film is both a partisan ballad, showing the real face of German occupation of Poland during WW2 and a startling war thriller. It tells a story of corporal "Wydra", struggling not only with Germans and Polish traitors but also with his own past...

Three friends from the neighborhood – Adi, Pele and Chemist – are often referred to as freeloaders, morons, losers. This is a gross simplification! In fact they are underestimated by the world. It hasn't appreciated them YET. Life presents them with challenges and difficulties, like bad luck at work or mentally ill neighbor's dog or a grandmother who steals their hashish. But they do not give up!

A journalist from Warsaw travels to Silesia and manages to find a tenement house full of exceptional inhabitants.

Bogdan, an internationally acclaimed concert pianist, retires from the stage when his wife Iza dies, and he seeks solace on his mother's little farm. The little village on the Baltic coast is where he and his wife had sworn to love each other for all eternity when they were still children. Now that everything has changed, Bogdan succumbs to fate and begins to drink heavily. Thankfully his resolute mother has a formula to free the despairing Bogdan from his state of lethargy: renovating the run-down farmhouse and hard work in the stables. One day Bogdan makes a fateful discovery. A surprisingly musical cow, of all things, rekindles Bogdan's life spirits and gives him a crazy idea. His friends and family throw their hands up in horror, and when he tops things by organizing a village feast, things run completely out of control.

The action is set in the early 20th century. The film is made up of six sequences. In the first, Michal, young man who came from Poland to Germany, enrolls in a course on how to behave in social situations and on etiquette. However when he tries to approach girls using the rules which he's been taught... he only makes a fool of himself. Then, he goes to work for a man who owns a carousel and who loves to chase other women. In the next sequence, Michal meets the divorced landlady, Mrs. Luther, and goes through a whole lot of erotic experiences. When he escapes exhausted from his landlady, he starts working in a mine and visits brothels on a regular basis. He looks on women in a totally cynical manner. However, his persistent wandering must finally result in a true love.

Inspired by true events of 2010 Polish Air Force Tu-154 crash in Smolensk, the film tells the partially fictional story of crash and various people affected by the tragedy. The protagonist is a journalist Nina, who refuses to accept the official version of the story and pursues her own independent investigation.

The story of the legendary battle through the eyes of Jedrek - a boy who went through the hell of the gulag and left Russia with the Polish Army as one of thousands of polish orphans. Soon a decisive attack on a monastery located on the hills of Monte Cassino is to take place at the front - this spectacular battle will decide the lives of many soldiers and the fate of the Allied offensive in Italy, and will change Jedrek's life forever.

Second half of September 1939. Lt. Brejer, along with a detachment of his sappers, receives orders to blow up the bridge. The promised explosives do not arrive. So Brejer gets the order to withdraw and reunite with the rest of the division. Along the way, suffering hunger and discomfort along with his soldiers, he joins various divisions, collects survivors and fights. From a German prisoner of war, he finally learns that the Soviets have entered Poland. Finally, he and his men manage to reach his home unit, but that unit has just surrendered to the Germans.

Poland, 1930s. Agata, a twenty-year-old young woman, a niece of the lady of a small manor, is about to get married. This fact causes dramatic changes for three people: Miss Stawro, a music teacher who cares for Agata, and two sixteen-year-old boys, Witek and Stas, who have their own feelings for the girl. However, the closer the wedding date gets, the more the bride-to-be is haunted by morbidly surreal visions related to her troubled past.

The story of Walerjan Wrobel, who was taken from occupied Poland to Germany for forced labor in 1941.

Set in 1989, story of a man beat up by two ex-policemen and left to die in a dump. Marek survives after the brain surgery that leaves him amnesiac. He wanders through the city, sought by his assilant, who fear he will testify against them. Marek finds shelter with a girlfriend/bagwoman who supposedly was once queen of Paris boulevards. Marek regains his memory just as the villains are to get him. He eventually returns to his house only to find out that his mother died and his brother left for Australia.

Wojnar is a wealthy man who is marrying off his beautiful daughter Kasia, in a small town in present day Poland. Wojnar had to bribe the groom with a fancy car, since Kasia was pregnant by another man. At the end of the ceremony, the car is delivered by a gangster, who immediately demands the promised money and the deed to land from Kasia's grandfather. Unfortunately grandpa is unwilling to let go of the land. Meanwhile each of the workers at the reception demand to be paid, so Wojnar, who is very reluctant to part with his money, tries to haggle and bribe his way out of all the situations.

A road movie about a dropout who leaves himself completely to chance. A parable about freedom, self-determination and the poetry of an undefined life.

The 22-year-old young man promises to be a great poet, but he also has a warm heart. He spends his summer time at a friend's mansion. The beautiful Maryla appears there. Young Adam's heart beats harder and harder, but his closest friend Thomas Zan is there, who also looks at Maryla. There is a confrontation between the two men, from which Adam emerges victorious. Tomasz leaves, leaving the field to his friend to find his life, happiness in Maryla....

An examination of the relationship between an indecisive medical student and his fiancee.

Dostoevsky’s latter-day opus about the siblings and their father is among the masterpieces of world literature. It asks profound questions about ethics and religion. Is there a God? Does the devil exist? Is everything allowed because we live in a world without morality? And if so, does patricide even constitute a crime? One of the most interesting adaptations of the material is The Karamazovs by Czech director Petr Zelenka. We witness a group of thesps from Prague on a trip to Krakow in Poland to stage the novel as a play in a derelict steelworks as part of the Closer to Life Festival. The project, however, is born under the bad sign, apparently doomed from the start. When they arrive, the roof is about to cave in, so that the actors are told to wear safety helmets. Their sole consistent audience is a laborer (Andrzej Mastalerz) who rather follows each dress rehearsal than watching over his seven-year-old son who has suffered a tragic accident in the factory.

One of the passengers on a ship carrying Poles on a cruise in December 1981 is a dissident high school teacher sent abroad by Solidarity. He is under surveillance of the secret police, anxious to get their hands on the info that he is carrying. When the ship is in the middle of the Baltic sea, martial law is declared and the ship is militarized. The captain announces he will turn and return the home port. Many anguished passengers put the life vests on and jump into the sea, where they are picked up by two German ships. The teacher, however, decides to return to Poland and continue the struggle for freedom.

Budny, a secret service officer, secretly surveils Bishop Karol Wojtyla for 20 years. An unreciprocated bond forms between Budny and the unaware Wojtyla, leading to an obsessive, pathological relationship from Budny's perspective.

Twenty years old prostitute and drug addict, Jola, by chance meets Andrzej, a "railway station gay". They try to stay together, in spite of numerous diffculties. They both are carriers of the HIV virus. At the end of their travels they find themselves in the Red Palace - formerly the recreation centre for Party dignitaries, now a home for AIDS sufferers - which is run by father Jan. In the nearby small town aggression begins to grow again the unwanted guests; the house have been promised to the local people for housing purposes... The lives and fates of Jola, Andrzej, and father Jan become increasingly intertwined with one another...

No description available.

A story about love and hatred, about those who cheat and who are cheated, about violence and sex and surprising secrets which we learn within these strange twenty four hours.

This is a story about the inhabitants of a block of flats standing alone on the outskirts of an industrial city. Unemployment, lack of prospects, and powerlessness create a special aura in which events unfold. The main character, 25-year-old Goździk, has lived here since he was born. He does not work or study.

Journalist Anna is trying to make a documentary about an opposition activist she met years ago.

A small town located right in the middle of Europe, but in reality probably at the end of the world. It is dominated by the depressing atmosphere of the Stalinist era, the still vivid memory of wartime atrocities, and bitter ethnic conflicts. Above all, however, the town has its own secret. Seven years earlier, a bloody pogrom against Jews took place here. Bogdan, the son of one of the victims, tries to uncover the truth. Torn between his father's story and his mother's story, a witness to the madness of Chaimka, a survivor of the pogrom, he flees the hardships of growing up in the "middle of Europe" only to return years later to the cemetery where his parents are buried.

No description available.

Bogdan and Marta take part in a TV show 'Blind Date' and eventually win a romantic stay at the luxurious hotel for the long May Day weekend. They seem to be so different, however, that they hardly stand each other.

The story of a spirited ten-year-old girl who has run away from her proudly affluent parents in town and finds grudging refuge with the slightly slovenly caretaker of an abandoned farm, an ex-teacher.

Adaś Miauczyński, a Polish intellectual, has severe alcohol problems which affect his relationship with his son Sylwek.

In Nazi-occupied Warsaw, an investigator tries to unravel the mysterious murder of a prominent attorney's wife.

A surreal collage of interrelated threads revolving around history of thirty-year-old Kuba who, with his parents' encouragement, decides to take his first job. Though none too convinced, he starts work as a delivery man. Having set out on his first delivery soon after he witnesses a traffic accident. He ends up giving a statement at the police station. And his plans begin to unravel. By a twist of fate Kuba has no idea about the significance of the part he will have to play on this particular day.

Young people living in Poland in the late 1960s had to face difficult times and make tough choices. Some of them were forced to leave their country for having Jewish origin. And for political reasons.

Created under a 'manifesto' whose directives would make Lars von Trier shudder, an anthology is presented that might look on paper like an exercise in forced hipness. Fortunately, its creators – Harmony Korine (USA), Alexsei Fedorchenko (Russia) and Jan Kwiecinski (Poland) – prove innovative and just insane enough to make an exhilarating experiment.

Conflicts between the scouts and boys in a reformatory at the common scout camp, are sometimes very strong. One of the scouts dies. Jacek does not trust the police, who recognizes that it was an unfortunate accident. Sam believes in a world of a crystalline division into evil and good. He begins a private investigation. He brings a strict regime to the camp.

19 year old Wojtek lives in a poverty stricken Polish town. He is in love with an older woman, an illegal emigrant from Ukraine. He boxes in illegal matches to get money and is spotted by a man running a security business. Accepting this man's offer means becoming a gangster, but this could allow him to a residence permit for his girlfriend Katya.

The film tells about the period of Polish history in the 20s of the last century, when the fragile government of the country fell, and a man of the people came to the fore. In fact, he turned out to be a cunning populist and an immoral politician, ready for any tricks for the sake of his goals.

A young scientist Anna Waterman is kidnapped after making a scientific breakthrough in a research project.

Grodno, the eastern border of pre-war Poland. On September 1, 1939, German planes bomb the city. One of the bombs hits the school of Leoś, Ewelina and Tadek. Literally and symbolically, the world of a carefree childhood, fun and first crushes ends.

Panoramic view of a resort town in the summer of 1930. In seventeen episodes we get a glimpse at the microcosm of its colourful inhabitants and visitors, Poles and Jews, the high society and the desperately poor.

During the brutal 1944 Warsaw Uprising, young poet Marek is forced to grow up in an instant as he joins the resistance amid the city’s desperate fight. When he meets a captivating woman, he must confront harsh choices.

The first Polish feature film about Poles murdered for aiding Jews. The plot is based on events that took place in Ciepielów between 1939 and 1942, enriched with storylines from other towns in the Mazovia region. It is a universal tale about the varied human responses to extreme challenges about the choices faced by the inhabitants of impoverished villages and small towns in the heart of Europe eight decades ago, and the terrible burden they took upon their shoulders.

The miner leaves the mine and tries to start a new life.

Blacha, an ex-middleman in the criminal underground, is the key witness in an enormous Pruszkow mafia bust. As such he is kept under lock and key hidden away from the world. Intent on getting an interview with the ex-gangster is Marcin Kruk, whose pregnant wife was collateral damage in a mafia car-bomb several years back with Blacha being his main suspect. Fortunately Blacha holds Marcin's journalistic work in very high regard, hence agrees to an exclusive interview in a secluded hotel in the Hel peninsula. There he retreads his criminal life...

Marta's surprise birthday party sets in motion a spiral of tragic events.

Actress Olga's political idealism and hopes for a better tomorrow are put to the hardest test. The authoritarian, omniscient communist power decides to break the woman when her father is hospitalized and fighting for his life, and her husband is in custody. Olga must find herself in a new situation and make an impossible choice.

A crazy comedy about the residents of a small estate of mining familoks Fytel. The characters lead a rather quiet life. They pass their time sipping beer and reminiscing about how things used to be. The idyllic peace is disturbed by the appearance of a "scorcher" in Fytel. In the background there is love, and a tangle of various amusing events that will eventually unite several lonely hearts.