Barbara Rachwalska
1950, a small town in Poland. Not the best times for shop owners like Jozef Piasecki - obstacles from authorities, restricted wholesale supplies. Moreover, he constantly argues with his son, the 17 year old Witek. Witek experiences love for the first time. This should be a time of great excitement for him, but Witek, being rather anxious about the future, becomes an example of a youth generation growing up under the long shadow of Stalin.
A film from the "Silhouettes of Polish Literature" series
Nights and Days is a family saga of Barbara Ostrzenska-Niechcic, (played by Jadwiga Baranska) and Bogumil Niechcic, (played by Jerzy Binczycki) against the backdrop of the January Uprising of 1863 and World War I. The film is a rather straightforward and faithful adaptation of a novel by Maria Dabrowska with the same title. The plot is woven around the changing fortunes of a noble (upper-class) Niechcic family in the pre-WWI Poland. There are two main crossing threads: a social history one and an existential one. The cinematographic version is a condensation of the 12 part award winning TV serial of the same title and using the same cast and producers.
To secure their team's success, dedicated football fans (Boleslaw Plotnicki, Mieczyslaw Czechowicz) plot to kidnap their opponents' star player (Andrzej Kopiczynski).
Three separate stories depicting the tense everyday life during occupation, as seen through the eyes of children. In “On the Road,” the two main protagonists are lost in the September’s strife: a young boy, and a soldier transporting the valueless documents of his broken unit. In “Letter from the Concentration Camp” the story’s protagonists are young boys who help their mother during the hardships of the occupation. Their treasure is an officer uniform belonging their father who is being held in a prisoner of war camp. In “Blood Drop,” the Germans find a set of typical Aryan characteristics in this story’s protagonist – a Jewish girl, hiding in an orphanage.
A group of young Lódz hoodlums spends their time shoplifting, partying and drinking heavily, until they are faced with serious consequences of their reckless behaviour.
Three separate short stories about young athletes who lose their chances of success. Young swimmer - because of unhappy love. Boxer because of a fight with hooligans, for which the judges will disqualify him. But the cyclist must decide for himself what is more important for him: victory or friendship.
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.
