Acting
A film devoted to the difficult fate and dramatic choices of actors during the war – whether to continue practicing their profession, performing in theaters that were openly operating and opened with the consent of the occupying authorities, and thus agree to a kind of collaboration with the enemy, or to abandon the acting profession and change careers. The author of the film presents the attitudes of actors in the General Government, primarily Warsaw artists: how they reacted to the directives of the Underground State and the resolution of the ZASP - the Secret Theater Council prohibiting its members from cooperating with open theaters.
A businessman, spoiled by the good life, learns that he suffers from a serious heart condition. He can only survive by finding a donor immediately. In the hospital, he accidentally meets a young man whose grief and job loss have taken away all his will to live. He is suicidal, so he is the perfect donor, and they must find a way to help him leave this world...
Engineer Andrzej Uriaszewicz returns to Poland in order to smuggle a valuable painting out of the country.
Bearing traces of the old Anton Chekhov play The Wedding, The Contract is set during an "arranged" ceremony. The bride and groom barely know each other, but this matters not at all to their tradition-bound families. At the last minute, the bride balks. Only slightly nonplused, the groom's father, a status-seeking doctor, decides to go ahead with the expensive reception anyway. Polish director Krzysz Zanussi uses this scenario to stick it to capitalist corruption, and to society's destruction of the individual spirit. Leslie Caron, the one recognizable member of the cast, is outstanding as a wealthy, over-the-hill ballerina who happens to be a kleptomaniac.
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.
The story of a young couple who try to make ends meet to afford Christmas presents for one another.
A grotesque story about a polluted area where gas leaking from a swamp causes noses to drop off.
Polish composer Stanisław Moniuszko fights for the right to stage his opera "Halka".
