The wife of a famous composer survives a car accident that kills her husband and daughter. Now alone, she shakes off her old identity and explores her newfound freedom but finds that she is unbreakably bound to other humans, including her husband’s mistress, whose existence she never suspected.
Polish immigrant Karol Karol finds himself out of a marriage, a job and a country when his French wife, Dominique, divorces him after six months due to his impotence. Forced to leave France after losing the business they jointly owned, Karol enlists fellow Polish expatriate Mikołaj to smuggle him back to their homeland.
Part-time model Valentine unexpectedly befriends a retired judge after she runs over his dog. At first, the grumpy man shows no concern about the dog, and Valentine decides to keep it. But the two form a bond when she returns to his house and catches him listening to his neighbors’ phone calls.
Véronique is a beautiful young French woman who aspires to be a renowned singer; Weronika lives in Poland, has a similar career goal and looks identical to Véronique, though the two are not related. The film follows both women as they contend with the ups and downs of their individual lives, with Véronique embarking on an unusual romance with Alexandre Fabbri, a puppeteer who may be able to help her with her existential issues.
19-year-old Tomek whiles away his lonely life by spying on his opposite neighbour Magda through binoculars. She's an artist in her mid-thirties, and appears to have everything - not least a constant stream of men at her beck and call. But when the two finally meet, they discover that they have a lot more in common than appeared at first sight...
Jacek climbs into the taxi driven by Waldemar, tells him to drive to a remote location, then brutally strangles him, seemingly without motive.
1982, Poland. A translator loses her husband and becomes a victim of her own sorrow. She looks to sex, to her son, to law, and to hypnotism when she has nothing else in this time of martial law when Solidarity was banned.
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.
A story about Janina Duszejko, an elderly woman, who lives alone in the Klodzko Valley where a series of mysterious crimes are committed. Duszejko is convinced that she knows who (or what) is the murderer, but nobody believes her.
Filip buys an 8mm movie camera when his first child is born. Because it's the first camera in town, he's named official photographer by the local Party boss. His horizons widen when he is sent to regional film festivals with his first works but his focus on movie making also leads to domestic strife and philosophical dilemmas.
At the end of the 19th century, somewhere in the outskirts of the Russian Empire, a doctor administers a lethal overdose of ether to a young woman – the object of his desire. After getting away with his crime, he finds employment in a fortress, where he continues his experiments with ether to manage pain and manipulate human behaviour. Despite his evilness, it is not too late for his soul to be saved from eternal damnation…
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.
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.
A young TV producer struggles with his conscience when he becomes convinced that his TV program is covering up a lie, but the more he tries to reveal the truth the more uncertainty he discovers.
Shipped off to a Romanian orphanage to finish his sentence, a British criminal finds romance but also discovers corruption inside the facility.
A beautiful Polish girl whose lover has gone to Rome to seek a divorce from his previous wife travels around Europe in search of him and suffers a variety of tragic adventures as the men around her try to fit her into their own selfish schemes.
In this mixture of fiction and documentary Krzysztof Zanussi invites a number of Poland’s great actors—Maja Komorowowska, Daniel Olbrychski, and Jan Nowicki—to "revisit" characters they played in the director's earlier works.
In 1456, Francis Villon and his companions attack a merchant in the forest. On the cart they find a girl dead of the plague. They give up the robbery. Villon spends the evening in an inn. He drinks, dances - the fun is interrupted by the arrival of a leper. Only Villon is not afraid to touch him, he treats him as a neighbor. In bed, his lover Gretel complains to the poet that no one wants to marry her....
Jerzy and Artur’s father dies, leaving behind a valuable stamp collection, which, they discover, is coveted by dealers of varying degrees of shadiness. The more involved the brothers get in their father’s world, the more dire and comical their situation becomes.
The last days in the life of Edward Dembowski (1822-1846), the organizer of the Cracow Uprising in 1846. The informal leader of the uprising, determined to fight for the unification of Polish lands and the liberation of the peasants, negotiates with other politicians.
