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During the 1655 war between Protestant Sweden and Catholic Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth some Polish-Lithuanian nobles side with Swedish king Charles X Gustav while others side with the Polish king Jan Kazimierz.

An epic saga of the Niechcic family, told from a woman's perspective. In 1914 in the war-torn Kaliniec, Barbara Niechcic remembers her youthful love, marriage hardships, family life in the countryside and finally her husband's death.

Three friends hope to build a factory but their plans are quickly jeopardized by local politics and one of the partner's dangerous love affair.

A group of students are spending the summer vacation at a university camp studying the science of linguistics. One of the camp directors, Jaroslaw, is a young professor who prefers the straightforward, intimate approach to students. He is opposed in his liberal views by Jakub, who likes to manipulate people. There is a confrontation from the beginning when Jaroslaw allows to attend the seminar a student who presents the views not according to the official line. In the end, a jury prize is given to mediocre paper, while the suspected school of thought still draws a recommendation. Finally the deputy rector arrives for the closing ceremonies, and since he disfavors the line of thought awarded by the recommendation the tensions rise. They climax when student in question bites the rector in the ear while receiving recommendation. The confrontation results in a scandal and the police is called in.

The last days in the life of revolutionary Edward Dembowski, who in 1846 tried to instigate an uprising of Polish peasants against the nobility.

A famous Polish journalist presents a problem for the powers-that-be when he displays his full political skill and knowledge on a television show featuring questions and answers on a world conference by a panel of journalists. His enemies take away his privileges when he is away. The shock of being "unwanted" parallels a deeper disappointment in his private life: his wife has an affair with a jealous young rival, and after 15 years of marriage and two daughters wants a divorce. She offers no explanations as he tries to untie these problems himself. All the moves he makes are the wrong ones. He takes on drinking heavily with students eager to attend his seminar after discovering the class has been canceled. The journalist, once suave and commanding is reduced to silence.

An ordinary factory worker buys a camera on the occasion of the birth of his child. The authorities order him to make documentaries about the factory's success. But his endeavor to be truthful leads him to opposition against censorship.

The crusty hero, Habryka, is an old miner who has won many worker medals and is now retired with his youngest son and latter's family living with him. To build new apartment buildings, the old houses are being bought out, the residents given apartments in the new houses, and being cleared away. But Habryka refuses to sell. He thinks his house has too much history, and he will not leave even if the new place have more modern facilities. Everybody tries to convince him. His son's wife leaves, he is threatened but to no avail. Finally he gives in when the irate head of the mine gives him a new model house. Unfortunately the house is in a remote location and many gadgets confuse the wife. They are lonely. He dies in his sleep, and later gets a giant funeral as a homage to one of the oldest miners in the district.

In 1905 Poland, anarchists pass a newly-made bomb between them for attacks on a Tsarist governor. The device's presence proves devastating to the revolutionary group.

During a pogrom in Poland on the eve of World War I, a group of Jews seek refuge from the Cossacks. The fugitives hide out in a rural inn, terrified that they may be given away at any moment.

A psychological portrait of a young Polish theatre actress, searching for her own way in life. She plays a mechanical dancer in a play "Dance of the Marionette", a complete opposite of her real personality. She lives on her own, occasionally visiting a famous old actress to talk about the theater and taking care of a poor neighbor. She fights her sophisticated mother and rejecting the truth about her beloved father, who died an alcoholic.

A young, idealistic poet turns his back on civilization and goes to a small, backwoods village, rents a bed in the house of an old woman, and decides to make his living as a lumberjack. He soon realizes that the world around him is far from perfect. He does not make any real contact with the people in the village. An then another outcast like him rents a bed in the same house.

Story opens with Lucja Krol's husband under the tram. She gives birth to her fourth son on the floor of their new apartment. Neighbor Wiktor, a communist intellectual, befriends the poverty-stricken family but is soon arrested and sent to jail. During the war Lucja narrowly escapes a Nazi roundup at the black market. Her sons hold ardent Communist meetings in their apartment, with her blessing. Lucja works hard, but without complaint. After the war, Klemens is inexplicably arrested, accused by the new regime of being a collaborator. Wiktor, now a high-ranking party member, trying to defend him, himself falls into disgrace. Klemens is tortured to "confess" and dies in jail, a Communist to the end. Lucja is never told about his fate.

A naive inexperienced young man spies on a woman who lives across the courtyard, and falls in love with her. He starts using tricks which he hopes will lead to them meeting.

A soon-to-be lawyer crosses his path with a taxi driver and a young sinister man.

During the screening of the film "Daybreak" at the Liberty Cinema, movie characters suddenly come alive and begin to talk to the viewers. The situation surprises communist authorities who send a censor to the theatre.

When the war breaks out, renowned Polish-Jewish poet Aleksander Wat leaves German-occupied Warsaw with his wife Ola and their son. In Lviv, however, they are arrested by the Soviets and separated. Ola and her son are sent to Siberia.

A renowned actor, Rafal Nawrot, is invited to play the main part in a theatre production of "Romeo and Juliet" in a backwater town. Upon arriving he realizes his mistake and is packing to leave when Julia, a beautiful blonde teenager appears at his hotel room door, the starstruck emissary from a local fan club. The encounter triggers a host of erotic fantasies and dreams for Nawrot, who decides to stay in town after all. Although his dreams more or less come true when Julia becomes sexually involved with him, his growing obsession with the young woman is paralleled by her emotional growth in a simultaneous relationship with a lover her own age.

Bronek Pekosinski lives in Zamosc, Poland. He is probably 83 years old. He has no family and does not really know who he is. Everything about his life is fictitious: symbolic is the date of birth - the day World War II broke out, as well as his surname - after PKOS, an abbreviation of a charitable institution, and the place of birth - the Nazi concentration camp, from where his mother threw him over a barbed wire fence. Even his friends and guardians turned out to be false. Only his loneliness and his hump seem to be authentic. Two great powers have vied for young Bronek's soul: Roman-Catholic church and a totalitarian state. He fell into alcoholism. Partially paralyzed as the effect of cerebral hemorrhage, he is fired with an ambition of acquiring a mastery in a game of chess. And even though he is continuously humiliated and driven away, betrayed and victimized, he manages to retain his personal dignity and trustful nature of a small child. Throughout all his life Bronek has been searching for his mother.

Tomasz Siwek unexpectedly changes from an obedient communist party member into an opposition activist. And all that happens during a Solidarity rally where he was sent to spy on the protesters.

An unemployed English teacher has private lessons with the fiancee of a mysterious American. When the foreigner suddenly disappears, the woman asks the teacher to help her find him.

Four stories of love: yearned-for, betrayed, found. In the confessional, a priest is confronted for the first time by his eleven-year-old daughter (and seeks advice from his mother); a married colonel in the Polish Army is reunited with an old lover; a convict is jilted by his wife but has the last word; a professor of literature must decide how to react to a lackluster student who declares she is in love with him. Sometimes things go wrong, occasionally right. (The colonel flushes love letters down a toilet, rather than burn them.) In each vignette, the protagonist is played by Jerzy Stuhr, who also wrote and directed.

A young boy dreams of rebuilding a cinematograph constructed by his ancestor. The boy's father, however, does not approve of the idea.

Two entrepreneurs become tangled in the web of a Russian thug.

A cynical doctor, who is dying of cancer, would like to know the meaning of his life. He has to fight for it or just get ready for death.