Initially conceived as a short, this debut feature by acclaimed self taught animator Mariusz Wilczyński was 15 years in development. Emerging onto the festival circuit last year it won major prizes at the Viennale, Ottawa and Annecy as...

Made on a shoestring budget over a period of two years, this Oscar nominated documentary short was born out of Hanna Polak’s wish to help the children she found fighting for survival on the streets and railway stations of Moscow....

In post-war Poland, nun Anna (Magdalena Cielecka) is brought to a location where she is to look after a political prisoner (Olgierd Lukaszewicz). She quickly discovers that the prisoner is the very priest who was her first great love and...

Written and directed by one of the outstanding partnerships in contemporary Polish cinema Saviour Square resonates with tension. Jowita Budnik gives an exceptional performance as Beata whose life and dreams pivot precariously on the...

Now memorable to UK audiences as Aunt Wanda in Pawlikowski’s Ida (also on BFI Player) Agata Kulesza was already well known in Poland when she played this title role, for which she won the Polish Academy Award for Best Actress. Opening...

Remarkable as a feature film debut Borys Lankosz ’black comedy took the festival circuit by storm with its subversive style and provocative politics which resonated across contemporary as well as historical perspectives. Previously...

With Earth’s civilisation in decay, a team of astronauts are sent to populate a new planet. The last original survivor Jerzy (Jerzy Trela) is treated by the emergent feudal society as a demi-god, and sends a video diary back to Earth...

In 1950, a night-time passenger train hits and kills Orzechowski (Kazimierz Opaliński), a train engineer who happened to be on the tracks. An inquiry follows, but nothing is quite as clear as the committee would hope, with...

Apparently the script for this multi-award winning film was initially rejected. In the end the script, the film, its director and actor Zbigniew Zamachowski won Polish Oscars. Shot in black and white it focuses on 15 year-old Tereska...

Agnieszka Smoczyńska’s feature debut The Lure (2015) broke lots of conventions and produced one of the most distinctive contributions to Polish cinema in years. This second feature, which screened at Cannes 2018, focussed in a...

Often quoted as a favourite Polish comedy Day of the Wacko is a non-stop tirade about the inequalities and indignities of life as seen through the eyes of Adaś Miauczyński. Played this time by Marek Kondrat, Adaś is a recurring character...

Pulsing with a raw energy (CARIBOU, Can’t Do Without You, throbbing in the background) All These Sleepless Nights garnered Michal Marczak the Best Director award for documentary at Sundance 2016 and success on the international festival...

Postal worker Irena (Maria Chwalibóg) lives with her 8-year-old son Boguś (Paweł Witczak) in a run-down apartment on the outskirts of Wrocław. Overworked and neglected by an uncaring society, she is ground down by the adversity and...

Set in Cologne and featuring a pan European cast (including Poland’s Maciej Stuhr) 33 Scenes… confirmed Małgorzata Szumowska as talent to watch on the international festival scene. It won the Special Jury Prize at Locarno 2008 and...

After leaving the army, Andrzej Leszczy (Jerzy Skolimowski) drifts from town to town, taking part in boxing matches. When he arrives for his next match, he discovers that an old university friend, Teresa (Aleksandra Zawieruszanka), is...

Perhaps developing from his experience making Father and Son (2013) with his own father Paweł Łoziński turns to conversations between a mother and daughter. This film’s universal resonance resulted in invitations to festivals around...

From the late 1960s until the beginning of the 1980s, Krzysztof Kieślowski made more than 20 documentary shorts, touching on the vocations and lives of everyday people across the communist Polish People’s Republic, as well as...

For the Sherpas, Kumbhakarna is a holy mountain, one that must not be climbed. Yet when a group of Polish and Russian alpinists ask Jomdoe and Ngada for their assistance in scaling the mountain, the couple break with taboo and agree to...

11-year-old Paweł (Wojciech Klata) is brought up by his technology-minded father Krzysztof (Henryk Baranowski) and religious aunt Irena (Maja Komorowska). After gifting Paweł a pair of ice skates, Krzysztof places all his faith in a...

Andrzej (Olgierd Łukaszewicz) is in serious condition in hospital, while his wife Dorota (Krystyna Janda) is pregnant with her secret lover’s child. Hospital consultant (Aleksander Bardini) is thus forced to make a difficult choice that...

Janusz (Daniel Olbrychski) is dragged away from Christmas Eve festivities by his former lover Ewa (Maria Pakulnis), who asks for his help in finding her missing husband. As they wander around Warsaw together, it transpires that Ewa might...

IV Student Anka (Adrianna Biedrzyńska) enjoys a good relationship with her father Michał (Janusz Gajos), with whom she lives. When Michał goes abroad on a business trip, Anka finds an envelope with the words “Open after my death.”...

VI Young man Tomek (Olaf Lubaszenko) spends his evenings spying through a telescope on Magda (Grażyna Szapołowska), a woman in her thirties who lives in an apartment opposite his. He begins to fall in love with her. As Magda becomes...

VIII Elderly ethics professor Zofia (Maria Kościałkowska) unexpectedly meets Elżbieta (Teresa Marczewska), a Jew of Polish descent who lives in the US and has translated Zofia’s works. Through the course of their acquaintance, it...

Having spent most of his career in the Łódź police department, inspector Adam Kruk (Michał Żurawski) is sent across the country to Białystok, the town where he grew up. There, he is to investigate the kidnapping of a young boy. In doing...

The world has ended but there is still life… Let’s play in a game called theatre!

After attending the funeral of their estranged father, brothers Jerzy (Jerzy Stuhr) and Artur (Zbigniew Zamachowski) discover that they have inherited a valuable stamp collection from him. In their attempts to resolve what exactly they...

Polish seminal Romanic verse drama Balladyna by Juliusz Słowacki is a starting point for creating an innovative story about how technology intertwines with loneliness, fear, obsession, love, and murder in the times of global isolation.