Maria Konwicka

A documentary about Elzbieta Czyzewska, one of Poland's greatest actresses, a beauty icon of the 1960s, who died in 2010. She had a great career in Poland, but the filmmakers focus more on her attempts to make a name for herself as an actress in America, after her sudden emigration to the United States with her husband, American journalist David Halberstam. Friends and acquaintances of Elzbieta Czyzewska speak without embellishment about her failed marriage, her battle with alcoholism won after years, and her attempts to return to Poland. This is a story about the fate of the actress at different stages of her career: at the top, at the bottom and in between.

Set at the turn of the century, the story concerns a Polish poet living in Cracow who has decided to marry a peasant girl. The wedding is attended by a heterogenous group of people from all strata of Polish society, who dance, get drunk and lament Poland's 100-year-long division under Russia, Prussia, and Austria. The bridegroom, a painter friend, and a journalist each in turn is confronted with spectres of Polish past.