Dorota Wardęszkiewicz

Composed from the conversations that the director holds with people passing by in the street under his Warsaw apartment, each story in 'The Balcony Movie' is unique and deals with the way we try to cope with life as individuals. All together, they create a self-portrait of contemporary human life, and the passers-by present a composite picture of today's world.

What does it mean to be awake in a world that seems satisfied to be asleep? Kris and Michal push their experiences of life and love to a breaking point as they restlessly roam the city streets in search of answers, adrift in the euphoria and uncertainty of youth.

Charles sits for hours in a wardrobe in a rented room on the attic, looking back on his whole life. He was brought up by a single mother who loved his only child with a sick desperate feeling and limited all his world to her own person. Charles' tragedy began with his adolescence. It made his mother aware of her feminity that resulted in her new marriage. Together with a new husband she decided to send the boy to a school for retarded children. Upon leaving the school Charles starts to seek his longing mother who moved out, in a meanwhile, not giving any address.

A film on the world's most bizarre charity: based on the idea that sex can change the world, the NGO raises money for their environmental cause by selling home-made erotic films on the internet.

A documentary charting the rigors of the Russian space program, where the symbol of national pride would justify the most demanding training conditions.

A Polish vehicle traverses the roads of Ukraine. On board, people are evacuated following the Russian invasion. This van becomes a fragile and transitory refuge, a zone of confidences and confessions of exiles who have only one objective, to escape the war.

The Polish village of Stare Juchy has been pulled apart. A third of the population left to work in Iceland, and those who stayed behind—most of them from the older generation—are hoping for their return. But by now their children and grandchildren are settling into new lives on the other side of Europe. The distance separating them is great and the journey expensive, so they don’t get to hug each other very often. The best alternative is intensive contact by Skype.

Two acclaimed documentary film-makers - father and son - drive from Poland to Paris to see the place where the ashes of the father's mother are buried. What accompanies them on the way are resentments, quarrels and sincere confessions.

Relationships with the people you love most are often the most complicated. This is the problem Hania and her mother Ewa face during their sessions with a psychotherapist, filmed intimately and with the utmost respect by director Paweł Łoziński. The camera always focuses on one person at a time, revealing every emotion hidden behind the words and silences. The empathetic therapist carefully but purposefully peels away the hard layers under which mother and daughter shield themselves. Little by little, the personal tragedies that hamper their communication rise to the surface, as well as the source of the longing for love and acknowledgement that they find so hard to fulfill.

Writer Slawomir Mrozek recalls his past as he prepares himself to move out from Mexico and resettle in his native Poland. He discusses his youth, career and emigration, while walking down his vast Mexican ranch La Epifania.

The protagonist of the film is Tomasz Machciński, a man with a hundred faces, or rather with one face, but one that is both a material and a work of art. Machciński photographs himself disguised as famous people.

The story of a journalist, member of the Communist Party and Solidarity, who gave up his profession during martial law and started selling bread.

Four nights in Caracas. A documentary essay about chaos and civilization.

An intimate portrait of the city and its people. We meet the characters in the NYC subway and we follow them to the surface finding out about their lives, cravings, passions, hopes and dreams - sometimes lost and sometimes still waiting to be fulfilled. What comes out of it is an emotional tale of solitude that haunts us in 21st century western world.

What are the limits of personal sacrifice? The film tells the story of a match factory worker who takes up a remarkable challenge. We observe several crucial months in her life as she attempts to turn her dreams into reality. It’s the story of an extraordinary transformation, and about a love that gives her life meaning.

No description available.

Impressionistic poster warning of harmfulness of lead to the human body.

The Future of an Illusion (1997) is a poetic, semi-documentary portrait of Havana on New Year’s Day, following seven characters whose lives intertwine amid the crumbling beauty of the city. An old widow, a young prostitute, a fallen aristocrat, a jobless couple, a weary coachman, a lonely child, and a wandering poet each face their own illusions of change, love, and escape. Through their stories, Franco de Peña crafts a lyrical meditation on hope and disappointment, where the promise of renewal fades into the quiet persistence of everyday survival.

The life of a female weaver is thrown onto the socio-political canvas of pre-war and post-war communist Poland through the use of expressive allegorical and symbolic imagery in this imaginative take on the documentary form.

Alexei is a nineteen year old recruit being flown in to perform his military service on the frontier of northern Russia. The base is one of few such remaining outposts on the Arctic Ocean. There are five other seasoned and long serving soldiers stationed here, each with their own personal story or secret that has caused them to retreat from the real world. Their training and breaking in of the new arrival is sometimes humorous, at times harsh. Gradually, they each reveal something of themselves in their daily interactions and private moments as they continue their absurd duty in this snow covered no man's land, hundreds of miles from the nearest human settlement.