Warszawa

On an ordinary winter's day, various people from outside Warsaw come to the Polish capital city for different reasons. They all have something to deal with, and their paths eventually intertwine.

Over a decade after the almost total wartime destruction, Warsaw still looks bruised and battered. Ruined houses are nevertheless inhabited which can be dangerous for the local population.

Pilot Stefan Janotta recalls the war and the years following, when he helped rebuilding Polish Airlines.

Amid the hustle and bustle of the Bałuty district in Łódź, a young man lost in the grind of part-time jobs hides his true self. Harsh words and rough streets fill his days until one person makes him realise there’s more. Together they roam the city on a scooter, sharing meals and moments before it’s time to say goodbye.

The history of the Warsaw Ghetto (1940-43) as seen from both sides of the wall, its legacy and its memory: new light on a tragic era of division, destruction and mass murder thanks to the testimony of survivors and the discovery of a ten-minute film shot by Polish amateur filmmaker Alfons Ziółkowski in 1941.

A Vietnamese girl, Mai Anh, illegally enters Poland. Now she only has to reach Warsaw, where she will join her boyfriend and start the life she has dreamed of. But the journey through Poland turns into one of humiliation and violence.

'Igła" (The needle) is a former prisoner who seen the Blessed Virgin. He survived the conversion and wants to save people. In his quest to Warsaw meets the following characters: Martin - shy businessman and a victim of bullying, Lucy - working in a sex shop dreamer, Filip - a teenager who wants to get out of his native village, Jurek - embittered alcoholic who lost their lives and Monica - corporate single girl. Each of them is lonely, alienated - and each is at the threshold of a kind of awakening.

In the film Warsaw 88-89 we observe the city on the eve of the coming changes, captured on VHS tape. Tomasz Dominik and Piotr Rozbicki capture interesting, distinctive details - an unusual balcony, inscriptions on the walls, beautiful but dilapidated architectural details - from the gray reality of shabby tenement houses, blocks of flats, squalid courtyards. In the background we can observe the political, economic and cultural context of the period: lifestyle, cars, clothes, texts on walls. In the public space the sphere of the sacred mixes with the profane.

"Warszawa 1935" ("Warsaw 1935") is a short movie which was produced by the Newborn special effects studio for nearly 4 years, showing the audience for the very first time the capital of Poland in the mid-war period. This film will take us to the streets of the city, presenting the precisely reconstructed pre-war Warsaw architecture. The main source of images for the digital reconstruction was photographs available among others in the State Archive of the Capital City of Warsaw. (source: promotional materials)

In the winter of 1943 two young Jews, Alek and Fryda, escape, via sewer tunnels, from the atrocities underway in Warsaw ghetto. Alek, entrusted with undeveloped photos of the horrors within, makes his way to a supposedly safe apartment only to find it occupied by Germans. Another tenant, a pole Stephania, abruptly offers to shelter him in her spacious apartment. She comforts him and they make love that very night. Stefania is uncommonly generous and willing to jeopardize her own safety by hiding a Jew. She even goes to a nearby church and rescues Fryda. But Fryda is ungrateful and proceeds to sabotage the trio's safety in insidious ways.

Warsaw Central Station, 1958. A place of greetings and farewells, an intersection of people from different parts of Poland and Europe. A girl waits in vain, she goes away. Soon the station would belong to the past too.

A military attaché at the French embassy is drawn into a world of abduction, betrayal and intrigue in the diplomatic salons and back alleys of Warsaw. A classic tale of spying, intrigue, and romance, based on the novels of Alan Furst and adapted by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais.