Casts & Crew
Also Directed by Wojciech Marczewski
A drama set in the year 1516 in Tuscany. Niccolo Machiavelli, stripped of office, remains in exile awaiting his return to favor by the new duke. When this moment finally arrives, Machiavelli discovers himself to be the victim of a plot hatched by the duke.
A boy comes of age under an oppressive, cruel socialist government and watches as it slowly but surely distorts his family, his school and even his own thoughts.
Set before the first World War in part of Poland under Austrian occupation, the story of a young boy in primary school who later grows up to become a rebellious, poetic-minded teen in the same school when the national movement toward liberation is under way. The story of a country where church and state work together to suppress the human spirit.
A small village during the period of agricultural reforms in 1945. The two protagonists, a terminally ill count and his housemaster, engage in a private game that consists of artificially maintaining the social hierarchy which reigned here for centuries.
The film is based on the well-known, translated into many languages novel of writer Pawel Huelle. It is imbued with nostalgia and the atmosphere of mystery story of a group of children, fascinated by the figure of a man named David Weiser.
The film is set just before Poland's communist regime came to an end, and the central character is a provincial censor (Janusz Gajos), a tired, sloppy, lonely man, whose wife has long since left him. For him, censorship is both an art and a game, but he does not enjoy it. During a screening of a sentimental Polish melodrama called "Daybreak" at the Liberty cinema across the road from the censor's office, the actors start to rebel and refuse to speak their lines. There is anarchy and when the censor is unable to control the situation, senior party officials are called in. Eventually a film critic notes that the situation reminds of "The Purple Rose of Cairo" by Woody Allen and brings a reel of the film to demonstrate. The officials watch the film with amusement until another mix-up occurs: the second projector is turned on accidentally and superimposes "Daybreak" over "Purple Rose".
