On old, scratched films there are the faces of Zbig­niew Bujak, Jacek Kuroń, Lech Wałęsa. You can hear the rattle of a film pro­jector. A frag­ment of a 1981 TV mater­ial, a piece of pro­pa­ganda about the Bydgoszcz con­flict. Later on, ori­ginal mater­i­als filmed back then. ‘We were film­ing to tell the truth, then we hid the mater­ial quickly so that it didn’t fall into the wrong hands. Now we think it’s time to face the his­tory and our memory’ say the authors of the materials.

The Polish-​Belarusian bor­der in Brzesc. Wheels are replaced under the train car­riages enter­ing the ter­rit­ory of the former USSR, where the gauge is 89 mms wider. Two worlds meet at the plat­form: the west­ern world of the train pas­sen­gers and the east­ern world of the Belarus­ian work­ers. The two groups are unable to under­stand each other.

An emin­ent cine­ma­to­grapher recon­structs another myth of Nowa Huta – the struggle of its inhab­it­ants to have churches built in this work­ers’ para­dise. Both the wit­nesses and the par­ti­cipants of this struggle talk about it, includ­ing cine­ma­to­grapher Tadeusz Rusinek, pho­to­grapher Stan­isław Markowski, his­tor­ian Jan Franczyk and artist Adam Mace­doński. In one archival shot Arch­bishop Karol Wojtyła, who is put­ting up a brick under the found­a­tions of a church, looks like a ‘man of marble’.

After the Soviet Union col­lapsed, Belarus became an inde­pend­ent coun­try and a Human­istic Lyceum was foun­ded in Minsk, with the aim of rais­ing an elite Belarus­ian intel­li­gent­sia. How­ever, in 1995, Lukashenka comes to power. Demo­cracy and free­dom come to an end. Also the Lyceum is labelled a banned insti­tu­tion. The Lyceum pupils do not give up though, but stead­fastly keep study­ing in the under­ground. They are very intel­li­gent and tal­en­ted and express their crit­ical atti­tude to their situ­ation in many ways, issu­ing an under­ground paper and record­ing music, attend­ing act­ively in oppos­i­tion to Lukashenka. The pres­id­en­tial elec­tions, for which Lukashenka changed the con­sti­tu­tion in order to be elec­ted for a third term, become the cul­min­at­ing point of the film.

Two blokes from Poland have arrived to the house of a Japan­ese woman who is always busy or who is not there and they would like to make a movie about her’, this is how Mar­cin Kosz­a­łka explains his idea. The Pol­ish film makers would like to make a doc­u­ment­ary about a Japan­ese woman but she tries to dir­ect their atten­tion to the sur­round­ing land­scape. Cul­tural bar­ri­ers and, first of all, lan­guage bar­ri­ers are to big…

We wit­ness the last few days of an old lot­tery ticket booth loc­ated on the track of the future sub­way line​.It has to be demol­ished together with the close ties its reg­u­lar cus­tom­ers developed.

A recid­iv­ist pris­oner works in a social care home for ser­i­ously han­di­capped chil­dren as part of the „Duet” pro­gramme. We observe 24-​year old Robert for sev­eral months, who is about to be released after eight years in a penal institution.

Dawn. The black fig­ures appear­ing in the brush­wood. They seem to be work­ing. The sound of crack­ing branches, after a while we notice the move­ment of hatchets. Warsaw on the other side of the Vis­tula river unfolds itself.

Patients in an onco­logy clinic receive chemo­ther­apy. Their faces can be seen in a close-​up. They lie in pairs and talk. They hold fas­cin­at­ing con­ver­sa­tions. Life seen from a dif­fer­ent per­spect­ive, a dis­tance offered by a hos­pital, reveals its value, sense and charm. Why so late?

Mar­cin Kosz­a­łka, dir­ector and cine­ma­to­grapher, returns to the theme that he tackled five years earlier in his debut, the unusu­ally con­tro­ver­sial film “I Gave Birth to Such a Beau­ti­ful Son.” This time, in addi­tion to the par­ents he films Nat­alia, his wife, and Zosia, his three-​year-​old daugh­ter. As in every rela­tion­ship, they have their good and bad times. Much like Marcin’s mother and father. But come what may…

At the start this film is strictly edu­ca­tional but the out­come is artistic. The Mar­ine Sta­tion of the Gdańsk Uni­ver­sity Insti­tute of Ocean­o­graphy has opened a seal­arium to pre­vent the extinc­tion of the Baltic Sea seal pop­u­la­tion. Jacek Bławut’s doc­u­ment­ary about an ocean­o­graphy stu­dent who was employed by the sta­tion devel­ops into a uni­ver­sal story of ini­ti­ation, friend­ship and a matur­ity process.

Mar­cin works as a mas­seur in a soc­cer club. Instead of going to the match with the team, he prefers the risky way of get­ting there with the hoo­ligans. Although he is blind him­self, he starts tak­ing his par­tially sighted son with him.

Cam­era is fol­low­ing the firts Pol­ish Pil­grim­age of Dis­abled People to the St.Mary Church in Lourdres, France. The phys­ic­ally and men­tally ill pil­grims are trav­el­ing with great expect­a­tions for a miracle. 

Cash, a car and a mobile phone.… as well as fish. A group of tough men from near Warsaw organ­ize a new form of enter­tain­ment. Their cus­tom­ary meet­ings over alco­hol and drugs start to include fights between aggress­ive aquar­ium fish, which are, of course, accom­pan­ied by bets for large sums of money. Such is the extent of this hobby that one of the char­ac­ters hopes that his cham­pion will con­trib­ute sig­ni­fic­antly to the pur­chase of a new Subaru.

Twelve year old Krzyś who sup­ports his unem­ployed par­ents by col­lect­ing scrap metal was a hero of the film Her­cules. After they had seen the film, the two young people, Ser­gi­usz and Kasia, were so moved by the boy’s fate that they decided to help him. They took him on hol­i­day, first to Warsaw where they live and then to the sea­side. The odds are that it was not a one-​off example of help and the boy’s fate will improve con­sid­er­ably in the future.

A com­pel­ling por­trait of a lame nine-​year-​old boy named Krzys, nick­named “Her­cules” by his friends. The boy sup­ports his whole fam­ily: his grand­mother and his unem­ployed par­ents. His mother once worked at a butcher’s shop, and his father in a mine. Krzys col­lects and sells scrap metal, which he car­ries to a crum­bling house near the coal-​train tracks. His par­ents drink and watch tele­vi­sion. Then a great event comes in Krzys’s life: his First Holy Communion…

What do we need wild cats for? Four sea­sons, four women,one goal. Film about the need for petting.

After his arrival in Wrocław Jacob Dam­mas (a Dane, whose mother is Pol­ish) vis­its the place where his mother was liv­ing with her father, before their exile con­nec­ted with her Jew­ish ori­gin at the end of 1960s. He is talk­ing to her former neigh­bors, he is dir­ec­ted to yet another address to find an old-​time fam­ily memento — the cup­board, men­tioned in the title.

When Magda met Bartek at a party, she instantly knew that it is the man she wants to spend her life with. They got mar­ried soon and when they hoped to be bliss­fully happy ever after, a shock­ing dia­gnosis arrived: bilat­eral malig­nant breast can­cer. Since that moment every day was a struggle. The woman didn’t want to undergo a tra­di­tional treat­ment, resort­ing to altern­at­ive medi­cine. Everything changed after Magda and Bartek heard another unex­pec­ted bit of news: that Magda is pregnant. 

One of the main thrusts behind the mak­ing of the film is an attempt to return to the time of child­hood, vaca­tion, and hot sum­mer. I remem­ber the feel­ing when the indef­in­ite num­ber of note­worthy details, things to dis­cover, stor­ies to explore, mat­ters to think over made each day seem to last forever.

Crazy Mike from Krakow spe­cial­izes in organ­iz­ing guided tours that are any­thing but typ­ical. He drives the tour­ists to Nowa Huta in a dilap­id­ated Vee Dub and allows the rel­ics of the past– the “Stylowa” res­taur­ant, the former site of the Lenin monu­ment, the giant steel­works, a typ­ical worker’s flat– to unfold their charms. Dur­ing the sight­see­ing, he talks about the joys of life in the People’s Repub­lic of Poland and the absurdit­ies of real social­ism. Will the memory of the trip stay with the tour­ists a little longer?

This remark­able story of the Ber­lin Wall is presen­ted from the per­spect­ive of rab­bits liv­ing in this city. In 1961 the anim­als were trapped in the green belt divid­ing East Ber­lin from the west­ern part of the city. They had stayed there until the Wall came down in 1989 when the rab­bits could par­ti­cip­ate in his­toric events that ensued. Thus, Berlin’s rab­bits shared the fate of the cit­izens of East­ern Ger­many who, isol­ated from the world, led their pre­cari­ous exist­ence under the scru­tiny of com­mun­ist authorities.

The story of the friend­ship between Jacek Bławut, the film-​maker, and thirty-​year-​old Michał, an alco­holic. The film tells of “co-​dependence,” the hope and power­less­ness he has exper­i­enced, and also of the deli­ri­ous “rat in a crown” of the title, which is forever tight­en­ing its noose. Drink­ing, sober­ing up, more drink­ing, another attempt at sober­ing up, drink­ing again… and so on, till the bit­ter end.

Two people have a date in a res­taur­ant: a quite reg­u­lar situ­ation but for them — a very spe­cial moment.

A hol­i­day sea­son has begun on a sid­ing in the Hel pen­in­sula. Hol­i­day makers make new friends, have fun together and talk about what makes them happy, sad, sur­prised or fas­cin­ated. New bonds are forged, sum­mer love is in the air. Vaca­tion in a rail­way car, which used to be pop­u­lar once, is now inev­it­ably becom­ing his­tory. The film is a nos­tal­gic attempt at evok­ing its unique atmosphere.

First task of the doc­u­ment­ary stu­dents, tak­ing part in the first Doc­u­ment­ary Course was to make the three-​minute short films entitled “Silence”. Each of them inter­preted this term dif­fer­ently. Six of the shorts were chosen and put together in a set, touch­ing much pro­found mat­ter than the ori­ginal aim of a student’s task.

Film presents dif­fer­ent inter­pret­a­tions of „silence” cre­ated by stu­dents of II Doc­u­ment­ary Course con­duc­ted by Andrzej Wajda Mas­ter School of Film Directing.

“Silence 3” is meant as a set of short docs made by stu­dents of the third edi­tion of the Doc­u­ment­ary Course. Four of the shorts were chosen and put together in a set, touch­ing much pro­found mat­ter than the ori­ginal aim of a student’s task. 

Liv­ing on wel­fare pay­ments too small to sur­vive on, in a tiny apart­ment with no hot water or gas, a single mother has no choice but to give her new­born to an orphan­age. 6 Weeks is an intim­ate and power­ful short that doc­u­ments a mother’s pain­ful good­bye as her baby, along with so many other babies, awaits its future in a Pol­ish orphanage.

Two blind chil­dren take us to their world of ima­gin­a­tion and sens­it­iv­ity. Touch­ing the pic­ture, they are try­ing to guess what it is about. Bitter-​sweet con­ver­sa­tion between them reveals a mag­nitude of space in which the blind chil­dren live.

Cie­cho­cinek, a fam­ous spa in Poland is vis­ited each year by thou­sands of people. In a short period of time they want to be cured and feel bet­ter – both phys­ic­ally and emo­tion­ally. The char­ac­ters of a film meet in one san­at­orium – they get their med­ical treat­ment, but also enjoy their strolls in a sum­mer sun, con­certs and dan­cing parties. Three weeks spent together is not much, but may be enough to find happiness.

The field of obser­va­tion is lim­ited to the seat of the Registry Office in Nowa Huta within its hours of oper­a­tions, or more spe­cific­ally to its three rooms. One of them is used to register births, the second one – deaths and the third one – wed­dings. The obser­va­tion of the cli­ents’ and clerks’ beha­vior in each room unveils a pic­ture of our every­day life as well as fate.

An all-​goods store at the local social care insti­tu­tion. All sorts of cus­tom­ers visit the store – some just to do shop­ping, oth­ers, for instance, to sing a song.

One act reveals a life drama and the drama of old age of two sisters.

The story of a lonely, 53-​year-​old psy­chi­at­rist liv­ing with his severely over­pro­tect­ive mother. When a woman steps into the pic­ture, a bad con­flict breaks out. After years of sexual abstin­ence, Ewa brings out the man in him. His mother yells, ‘Wake up, you’re fifty– three!”. He answers in St. Paul’s words, ‘Chil­dren obey your par­ents, hon­our thy father and thy mother and ye fath­ers, pro­voke not your chil­dren to wrath.

Darek and Michał bought from school the cop­ies of old Pol­ish 16 mm films and a pro­jector. Dur­ing hol­i­days they tour around Poland with their ‘trav­el­ling cinema’. They arrive at small towns stretched from the Baltic Sea to Silesia and offer pro­jec­tions for adults and chil­dren. On the way they meet a lot of inter­est­ing people, help with the har­vest and ‘bring cinema under the thatched roofs’.

Ania, Gosia and Ilona live in former state farm vil­lages sep­ar­ate from each other. Ania wishes to be a hairdresser, Gosia dreams of leav­ing home, where life seems to have no pro­spects, and Ilona yearns for a bet­ter future for her­self and her little son. All three take the decision to go to Warsaw and change what have been their fates.