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.
How was it possible that a single man influenced contemporary world so significantly? This film is an attempt to capture the phenomenon of a common man’s metamorphosis into a charismatic leader — an attempt to see how a Gdansk shipyard electrician fighting for workers’ rights awakened a hidden desire for freedom in millions of people.
Summer of 1939. Zosia is a young Polish girl who is deeply in love with Ukrainian Petro. Their great love will be put to the test when her father decides to marry her to a wealthy widower Skiba. Right after wedding she is left alone because her husband is drafted to the Polish army for the war with Germany. Meanwhile, tensions grow due to Jews, Poles, and Ukrainians living side by side.
The love between Mateusz Krol, a Kashubian boy, and Marita von Krauss, a Prussian aristocrat in whose family home he is taken in when his mother dies, grows and matures thorough the years, while Kashubia, the northern Polish region where they live, suffers the consequences of the tragedies that will ravage Europe from the beginning of the 20th century until the end of the World War II.
An attempt at depicting the life of a generation born and raised in communist Poland; a generation that lived through all the stages of that system and made it to democracy. Throughout his life, the film's protagonist has always tried to be active, but something always got in his way, either through an absurd coincidence, as a result of his own lack of ability, or due to the unpredictable nature of certain events in our recent history.
We meet ornithologist Anna in 1994 just as genocide is raging in Rwanda, perpetrated by the majority Hutus against the Tutsis. Anna manages to save the daughter of a colleague whose family has been murdered, and she takes her to Poland. But the woman returns to Rwanda to visit the graves of her loved ones. The director originally worked on the movie with her husband Krzysztof Krauze (My Nikifor – Crystal Globe, KVIFF 2005), but after his death in 2014 she eventually finished this challenging picture alone.
A story of passion, rivalry, love, and friendship. Jan Banas, acclaimed Silesian football player of the 1960s and 1970s, struggles to makes his dreams come true on and off the field. Stars is the story of a great love between young people torn by passion and ambition.
Marek, a young writer, is trying to solve the mystery of the night his friend Arthur died. In the recesses of his memory, Marek finds fragments of past events: a party at the home of an eccentric publisher, his argument with Arthur, the exchange of blows, blood. Afraid that he has killed his friend, Marek suppresses his feelings of fear and guilt in his passionate meetings with a woman who has more to do with Arthur’s disappearance than it seems...
The key aim of every ZOO is to protect animal species from extinction. In times of war, the most endangered species was the man. Under the Nazis' noses, about 300 people, mainly Jews, found shelter at the Warsaw Zoo during the Second World War. With the help of reenacted scenes with animals, interviews with the survivors, and archive footage, we are going to revive the surreal atmosphere of those events.
In the small town of Jarocin, the birth of a unique rock music festival provides an escape amid the social and political tensions of 1980s Poland.
A railway officer tries to learn about the lifestyle and language of a tribe that lives on the brink of a civilisation. Unfortunately, he creates problems for them.
The scientists speaking in the film make it clear that hundreds of people in institutes around the world worked together in working groups on the digital breakthrough. In Poland, we did not have advanced equipment, but scientific thought did not differ in level from the West. Parallel to the political events - the Solidarity strikes, the Round Table talks, the dismantling of the Eastern Bloc - a digital revolution was taking place.
"The Nixie", is a dark folk tale, based on an old Polish legend, immortalized by Adam Mickiewicz in a poem of the same name. It tells the story of a water nymph who takes on a human form to seduce a young man she encounters in the forest. Mesmerized, he makes a vow of love towards her, and the woman transforms back into the nymph to test his love. The young man, who does not know the nymph and woman are the same, succumbs to her mystical beauty and breaks his vow. The nymph then takes her revenge by swallowing him into the lake, where he will eternally remain as his punishment. The film begins in a life-like world and slowly morphs into the fantastical as the line between the real and the mystical blur. A coming-of-age fairy-tale, "The Fairy of Switez Lake" is a modern, seductive, filmic poem with a catchy new wave soundtrack for this timeless cautionary tale.
A documentary about Totart, an artistic formation from Gdansk whose iconoclastic and mocking appearances shook up the grim People's Poland reality of the 1980s. It is also a story about the phenomenon of the group's spiritual leader and ideologue Zbigniew Sajnóg and his surprising accession to the Niebo cult.
Twenty years ago five talented musicians decided to start a musical revolution in their native Poland and established a cult band. However, as time went by, their creative paths turned in different directions.
Cosmogonic is a 10 minute interactive science fiction animated short. It is the first VR experience inspired by the famous Polish science-fiction writer Stanisław Lem — a futurist, well acquainted with how fictional worlds can often encroach upon reality. This adaptation of a 1964 novel speaks perfectly to today’s world, where populism and disinformation threaten democracy. This experience is a testament to the importance of knowledge and community in the universal drive to freedom.
The Georgian Trio Mandili and the Polish band Lao Che perform together at Europejski Stadion Kultury 2018 in Warsaw, Poland. Trio Mandili play traditional Caucasian/Georgian folk music, while Lao Che's genre is a crossover of various styles such as ska, ambient, and folk.
