Wojciech Staroń

Americans consider themselves a 'nation of immigrants', but as the catastrophe of the Holocaust unfolds in Europe, the U.S. prove unwilling to open its doors to more than a fraction of the hundreds of thousands of desperate refuge seekers. Through riveting firsthand testimony of witnesses and survivors who as children endured persecution, violence and flight as their families tried to escape Hitler, this three-part documentary series delves deeply into the tragic human consequences of public indifference, bureaucratic red tape and restrictive quota laws in America. Did the nation fail to live up to its ideals? This is a history to be reckoned with.

A young man is working as a housekeeper in an empty mansion. When its owner returns to start his mayoral election campaign, the young man bonds with him and defends him when his campaign is vandalized, setting off a chain of violence.

Piotr is a psychiatrist. He is on night duty when a boy is brought to his ward. It is Kamil, the son he hasn't seen in years. The boy disappears from the hospital as quickly as he appeared. However, Piotr decides to get in touch with him. He invites him to his place and introduces him to his beautiful young fiancée. After Kamil's visit, the woman realizes that Piotr is a mystery to her and that she really knows nothing about him. And Piotr does indeed hide a dark secret...

The rise and fall of the most distinguished Polish-Roma poetess Bronislawa Wajs, widely known as Papusza, and her relationship with her discoverer, writer Jerzy Ficowski.

It is 1991 in Latvia and nineteen-year-old aspiring cinematographer Jazis’s whole world is thrown into chaos as he is dragged into the people’s peaceful protests against the Soviet Army’s attempted takeover of power in his country.

Mariusz lives in a cramped apartment in an old tenement with his mother, who suffers from depression and has not left the house for two years. The family survives on his father's pension. Mariusz should be finishing technical school, but he doesn't go to school. He earns money by finishing apartments in new housing estates and dealing drugs. He wants to improve his lot. He leaves his mother and rents an apartment in a new housing development. He thinks he will move up the social hierarchy by moving there. It turns out that it is not so easy to escape from his previous life and become a different person.

Remek Wróbel is a mailman and an enthusiastic member of an amateur football team. He’s pushing on forty, living the life of a bachelor. One day, everything changes – his neat, tidy life is turned upside down by the appearance of Grandpa, whom he hadn’t met before, and his new chatty neighbour, Marzenka.

While grazing their herd in the mountains, two teenagers are attacked. Nizar, 16, is killed, while Ashraf, 14, has to take a message back to his family.

7 year old Matías returns home from a friend’s birthday party to find his mother, Laura, unconscious on the floor. When she recovers her senses they decide to leave home and rush to a shelter for abused women where they spend 48 hours before Laura decides to rebuild her life somewhere else. Through the eyes of Matías we will discover their escape in a city where everything Matías once knew feels dangerous and foreign until Laura finds a secure place to raise her son.

Lucio, a prestigious university professor, takes the position of substitute teacher at a high school in the suburbs of Buenos Aires, where he grew up. Through tales, novels and poetry, he tries to distract his class from the harsh reality of their everyday lives. But soon, he must step out of his professional duties when Dilan, one of his students, is threatened by a local drug kingpin.

Eighty-year-old Tadeusz lives a quiet life as a pensioner with his wife Helena. After years of working in a hospital, he wants to enjoy old age and his charming house with a garden, where they soon plan to hold their beloved granddaughter’s wedding. The idyll is shattered by a tragic car accident that casts a shadow over his marriage and reveals cracks in his relationship with his son.

The film is about a group of old retired theatre actors in a retirement home for actors who aim to regroup and stage Goethe's Faust.

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 giant girl lives in a wild rural environment. When the modern world enters this isolated Russian Old Believer milieu, the girl is taken away and dragged into the world of professional sports. The aim does not differ much from that of a circus in the Middle Ages – to entertain audiences and exploit the limits of people’s mental and physical abilities. But the girl proves to have unbelievable willpower and athletic talent. She is able to adapt and triumph in this new world. This is the story of the famous basketball player Ulyana Semyonova.

After a particularly embarrassing performance, a struggling Polish actor chooses to quit his acting troupe. In desperation, he returns home, only to find his dying mother has replaced him with a farm hand from a nearby mental institution. Alienated and depressed, he attempts to find his place in the world by driving out his replacement as completely as possible.

Feeling neglected by her mother and sister on their holiday in Spain, 13-year-old Claire tries to help a young Senegalese beach vendor to escape his misery.

Damian, a young boy raised by a single mother, believes that his father is a famous footballer playing for Glasgow Celtic F.C. His dream is to visit him. In his everyday life he has difficulty finding a common language with his mother who is trying to make a new life for herself with a younger man.

In the late 1980s, journalist José de Zer seeks proof of alien life in Argentina — even if he has to fake evidence — causing a surreal media circus.

A cheerful story about an old lady trying to correct a past mistake and recover a priceless necklace. The heroine develops a foolproof system to ensure that she wins at the casino. The actions of the aged lady attract the interest of a young gambler. He decides to gain her trust and work out the system.

A story of a married couple with two children, whose housing problems, the man's infidelity and the woman's fragility lead the family to destruction.