Antonina Gordon-Górecka

The life of a grumpy 40-year-old man living with his wife in a high-rise block. Every day is like the other - quarrel over dinner, garbage, neighbours, elevators, lost socks. He hates everybody, especially his wife. Not even sexual fantasies are an escape from the hell, he imposes on himself.

While visiting Warsaw, Hanka falls for a record-breaking bricklayer. Soon she returns to the city to work at construction sites and prove that women's work is not worse than that of men's.

Martha Weiss, a Jew, is sent to Auschwitz concentration camp with her family. On the first day of their arrival Martha is, by a coincidence, chosen as an interpreter, but her entire family is killed. Waiting for the Red Army to deliver them from the prison camp, the film depicts Martha and her friends' struggling life under the tyranny of camp guards and equally bad 'capos', administrative personnel chosen from among the prisoners.