Andrzej Szenajch

To be defeated and not be - a victory. This is the motto that life is guided by three young friends: Alek, Sophy and Rudy. Scouts, high school graduates high school in Warsaw drifting ambitious plans for the future broken through September 1939. Entering adulthood in a very dramatic times, which puts them a choice - to survive at any cost, or to join the fighting for a free homeland, risking everything. The boys brought up in patriotic homes, shaped by the ideals of scouting, they decide to fight. They become soldiers, and although every scrape with death, they can live a full life.

At the end of the 19th century, somewhere in the outskirts of the Russian Empire, a doctor administers a lethal overdose of ether to a young woman – the object of his desire. After getting away with his crime, he finds employment in a fortress, where he continues his experiments with ether to manage pain and manipulate human behaviour. Despite his evilness, it is not too late for his soul to be saved from eternal damnation…

A little known episode from the life of Stalinist security police office Julia Brystiger. Her nickname Bloody Luna was a reference to her incredibly brutal methods of interrogation. In the early 1960s, she appears in a centre for the blind on the outskirts of Warsaw, a place often visited by Cardinal Wyszyński, whose imprisonment in 1953-1956 Brystiger supervised personally. During a difficult and heated discussion with the cardinal, Brystiger denounces the communist ideology and begs for forgiveness for her crimes and for guidance in her search for God.

A story about the key events of the Wielkopolska Uprising - a dramatic arrival of Ignacy Jan Paderewski in Poznań, and the people who prepared the uprising, fought in it and won.

The true story of pianist Władysław Szpilman's experiences in Warsaw during the Nazi occupation. When the Jews of the city find themselves forced into a ghetto, Szpilman finds work playing in a café; and when his family is deported in 1942, he stays behind, works for a while as a laborer, and eventually goes into hiding in the ruins of the war-torn city.

A heroic fantasy based on the famous novels by Polish writer Andrzej Sapkowski, "The Sword of Destiny" and "The Last Wish". This film immerses us in a world inhabited by kings and knights, princesses and sorcerers, priests and magicians, where fire-breathing dragons guard untold treasures, and human greed leads to an endless struggle for power, cruelty, bloodshed, and violence. And this world has its own superheroes - fearless witchers, people with magical powers. Their mission is to protect the human race from any misfortune. The witcher Geralt of Rivia must find the young princess Ciri, kidnapped by enemies. Only her return to the small kingdom of Cintra, which was attacked by aggressors, can restore peace and order there. The brave witcher sets off on a journey, long, distant and deadly.

The life of the pope John-Paul II, from his youth as a writer, actor, and athlete in war-torn occupied Poland to his election as Pope at the age of 58.

Two intellectuals, a writer and a director, begin to play a mysterious psychological game in a peaceful countryside manor house during the Nazi occupation.

A mysterious loner rides into a small town carrying the body of a sought-after outlaw. But after he gambles his bounty away in a card game with the sheriff, he must devise a scheme to reclaim the dead man.

The biography of world famous Polish composer Fryderyk Chopin.

Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński is secretly abducted from the Primate’s Palace and sent into solitary confinement at Stoczek Warmiński, accompanied by Father Stanisław, recently freed from Rawicz, and Sister Leonia, coerced from Grudziądz, forming an unlikely retinue in his enforced exile. As state spies and the camp commandant conspire to break the Primate’s resolve, Father Stanisław risks everything to smuggle word of Wyszyński’s whereabouts to the outside, hoping to foil the regime’s darkest “third variant.”

The making-of featurette of Andrzej Wajda's 2007 film Katyń.

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.

Frenchman Abel Tiffauges is a naive man who lives a simple life working as a mechanic. Falsely accused of being a child abuser, he is recruited as a soldier when World War II begins, but is captured soon and taken to the heart of Nazi Germany.

A Hong Kong Special Branch cop and a CIA agent reluctantly team up to bring down a major international terrorist.

Military doctor Kwiatkowski, serving in a barracks hospital on the Western Territories, is rewarded with a week’s leave after successfully operating on Colonel Kiziora of the UB. He and his friend steal a truck bound for Warsaw, where among the ruins of his former home he meets his prewar neighbor Krysia, instantly falls in love, and, after a brawl with a Russian officer at a dance in the surviving “Polonia” hotel, pretends to be a high-ranking UB colonel to save face.

The story of catholic saint Maximilian Kolbe (1894-1941), who volunteered to die in place of a stranger in the Nazi concentration camp of Auschwitz.

Warsaw, 1909. Arthur Herling makes an assassination attempt on a Russian police official and his family. During the action, the officer's daughter is killed and his wife is maimed. The wounded militant is arrested. Tormented by remorse, Herling agrees to cooperate with the tsarist authorities as a provocateur. Into his cell comes Adam Tanski, suspected of having contacts with the wanted conspirator Andrzej Woyda. One day, while being transported in a prison ambulance, Herling kills the guards. Accompanying him, Adam urges him to escape to the mountains.

Alexander Joseph Lisowski was born around 1575, and served as a common soldier under Jan Potocki in the campaign against the Wallachian hospodar. Later, as the leader of a confederation of rebellious soldiers, he became famous for plunder and arbitrariness. He was sentenced to banishment for this. He then enlisted in the service of Dmitri Samozwaniec. He was already a commander shrouded in legend when the stigma of infamy was lifted from him. He returned to Poland and created his famous cavalry, later known in Europe as the Polish cavalry or Lisowczycy, after its creator.

A Polish Resistance fighter who survived the Nazi years cannot accept the new Communist power.

A film based on a Tolstoy novel about naïveté, idealism and love facing harsh reality.

An unknown terrorist infects computer networks with the most important institutions in the country with the virus. It paralyzes hospitals, trains, aircraft control system. Suspicions fall on Michal, a thirty-year-old IT genius and owner of a small computer company. Michal must prove he is innocent. He agrees to the proposal to cooperate with the prosecutor.

Journalist Anna is trying to make a documentary about an opposition activist she met years ago.

This sumptuously photographed period drama is set in 1791 Vienna. Maximilian Bardo, an opportunistic 18-year old Viennese man with aspirations to rise above his bourgeois upbringing, looks for a chance to shoehorn himself into the nobility. His hopes lead him to the castle of a wealthy inventor, Alexander Plant. It is here that a strange story is played out, as Maximilian, full of naive illusions and innocent ideals of what it means to be wealthy and noble, quickly loses his innocence. Falling prey to the jaded aristocrats in residence, he is cruelly initiated into their decadent games.

The year is 1989, and the country's first free elections in a long time are approaching. A man in a cycling cap organizes a chain of clean hands, using it as a tool in his election campaign. In the queue outside the passport office, people chat, make plans, and ponder what's worth selling abroad. Writers observe the world around them. One of them is applying for a passport. In Dzierżyński Square, the monument to Feliks Edmundowicz is being dismantled. Two drunk men sleep on a bench, and behind them is a sign reading: "All is well." The two writers observe the ongoing transformation of the political system.

The film tells about the period of Polish history in the 20s of the last century, when the fragile government of the country fell, and a man of the people came to the fore. In fact, he turned out to be a cunning populist and an immoral politician, ready for any tricks for the sake of his goals.

Warsaw elites meet at a ball in Baron Neman's palace, where they discuss the political situation in Poland.

During the Nazi era, a Jewish woman on the run takes a trolley which passes near the Warsaw ghetto, where the uprising battle is taking place, and some passengers are struck by stray bullets. They take temporary refuge in an empty building, and there she has a chance meeting with her ex-fiancé. He offers to put her up--that is, hide her--for a few days. He's now married, a professional who lives in an idyllic suburb reached by a trolley that runs through the woods. His wife seems more committed to putting up the fugitive than he is. The story involves the neighbors, the building owner who avoids involvement and seeks solace in classic poetry, and the super and his suspicious wife.

A Russian investigator is demoted after a young PPS militia escapes from Poland and vows revenge.

En route to London, Bear discovers at the border checkpoint that his passport is missing a few pages, which may prevent him from traveling to the city with the sports team he manages.

In Warsaw in 1980, the Communist Party sends disgruntled radio reporter Winkel to Gdańsk to dig up dirt on the shipyard strikers - particularly on Maciek Tomczyk, an independent labour union leader whose father was killed in the December 1970 protests. Posing as sympathetic, Winkel interviews the people surrounding Tomczyk, including his detained wife, Agnieszka.

Laguna was once a great soccer player whose career was interrupted by an injury. He spent years climbing the ranks to become an international referee. He sees the prevailing arrangements, manipulations, and bribery around him. Now desperate, he decides to stage an extraordinary culmination of his career: he wants to create a so-called "miracle Sunday" by "printing" the final round of games - taking substantial bribes from the interested clubs and manipulating the matches so that the results align in the order he set up.

Set during the insurgency of 1863, the story focuses on a tragic romance between a poor gentlewoman and a rebel noble. After a bloody battle a unit of insurgents have been wiped out and only one survived, but badly wounded. He eventually finds shelter and care from a landsteward's daughter, hiding in a burned-out manor with an old servant.

Based on a true story of a Polish musician who survived the concentration camp only because he could play on the accordion the title melody.

On the eve of the Day of the Dead, among mysterious old rituals of the Vilnius region, ghosts of the past and present start to appear.

A young architect is locked up in prison. He recalls his uncompromising youth and gradual sliding into the moral swamp of compromises. He was not alone. A group of his friends, dreamers and glass house builders, accompanied him.

As high school students put on a politically-engaged school play, tensions begin to rise between them and their headmaster. The conflict seems to mirror the social situation in the 1980s Poland.

In 1969 a young writer decides to write an essay on a well known Polish writer, who had to leave the country in the 50's, later living, working and dying in exile. He slowly assembles the character and even the exterior appearances of his idol until his own identity tragically disappears.

Set in the summer months preceding the September 1939 outbreak of World War II in Polish part of Lithuania. A young highschool lad, Witek, is hoping to pass the entrance exams to the university. His love interest is Alina, his high-school colleague.

A French nobleman is sent to Poland to bring the father of Queen Marie Casimire back to France, as requested by Louis XIV's minister. While carrying out his mission at the court of King Jan III Sobieski, he becomes entangled in political intrigue and falls for the beautiful woman caring for the old marquis.

Jan weds his mentally ill wife Joanna at her insistence, but her increasing dependence on sedatives, and the clandestine extra pills supplied by Jan, their son Piotr and Jan’s friend Maria, leads to Joanna’s fatal overdose. Accused of murder, Jan endures a trial, psychiatric evaluation and deep depression before the case is dropped; only after reconciling with his children does he finally leave the clinic to return home.

In difficult times of political and social change, a mother raises four sons alone.

A two-part historical film covering the years of the First World War and the post-war period up to 1919 - until the signing of the peace treaty in Versailles near Paris. An attempt to show the great and complicated process of regaining an independent existence by a nation within its own state. The screen shows characters from history textbooks: Józef Piłsudski, Ignacy Paderewski, Roman Dmowski, Wojciech Korfanty as well as representatives of the world political scene, incl. David Lloyd George, Woodrow Wilson, Georges Clemenceau, Vladimir Lenin and others.

Peter and Eliza are vacationing in the Mazury region. After an argument with her boyfriend, the girl leaves him and goes away. Meanwhile, Eliza's father Jul, a sculptor, organizes a reunion of former members of the student theater in which he performed years ago.

An Uruguayan diplomat brings his new wife with him on a business trip to Poland in the summer immediately preceding the outbreak of World War II.

The four sequences in the film cover four days in a life of young Warsaw lad in September 1938, 1939, 1943 and 1944. In the first sequence Jurek decides not to study in the Sorbonne but enlists in a Polish military school instead. In the second sequence the war starts and Warsaw is occupied. In the third sequence he works in the underground resistance. The final sequence takes place during the Warsaw uprising.

Girls no more, four heroines emerge into womanhood with a more clear-eyed outlook on life.

A teenage boy from a respectable family, Stanisław Czajkowski, dies in mysterious circumstances in a Krakow guesthouse. His brother-in-law, Count Maksymilian Rotter, married to Stanisław's older sister, Ksawera, is accused of the murder.

A Pole who spent time in an internment camp during the war on the Swiss-German border, visits the site many years later and recalls these days. He meets with other Poles confined in the same camp, including several women, in whose he had romantic interests.

Fall 1925. Six hundred officers demonstrate in front of Józef Piłsudski’s country house in Sulejówek, demanding the Marshal’s return to active political life. May 1926—a government crisis; Wincenty Witos forms a new government. Piłsudski’s move sparks clashes between supporters and opponents of the ousted government. Piłsudski appoints Kazimierz Bartel as prime minister. The beginning of the “moral reform.” Ignacy Mościcki becomes president. Summer 1930. A joint platform of opponents to the Sanacja government is formed. “Centrolew” is established.

The young count makes a bet with his friends about who will be the first to win the favor of a girl they meet. The opportunity to meet her arises unexpectedly quickly.

Modest editor, has shipped his wife and kids for the weekend, and is trying to relax in his house at the outskirts of Warsaw. His quiet evening is only disturbed by the accidental forecast made by a Gypsy woman, that at evening time he will murder a mysterious brunet.

Set in the early 1930s, a young man finds a job as a dishwasher in a hotel and quickly works his way up the ladder. Loosely based on the novel by Henryk Worcell.

The main character is a bookkeeper, 40, who lives a quiet, uninteresting life with her husband and son of school age. She realizes that soon she won't be needed much at home as the boy grows up and the relationship with her husband crumbles. It's only when an embezzlement is discovered at the office and she stands up to her management, that she realizes life has more to offer. She meets a well-off former classmate, married to an American. Then she meets Jacek and starts contemplating possibilities of a new start. She discovers love for the first time, but turns to old ways rather than to break loose.

Set in the late '20s. A thirtyish young man, who heads a small factory, faints at the funeral of a close friend. He decides to go home to his aunt and uncle for a while, but gets involved with a family of five women who had been in love with him at one time though he had apparently loved only one, who, unknown to him, has died since his departure. The women are mainly disillusioned with life or estranged from husbands while the youngest has a crush on him.

A family saga of Barbara Ostrzeńska-Niechcic and Bogumił Niechcic 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.

Two years after the war, during a train trip, Henryk (20) recollects the occupation period. He passes different train stations and recollects various situations from the past: his family life, working in a garage, guerrilla warfare, the fear that accompanied him every day. He’s looking at the travellers’ faces, including the ones who have survived the war.

The beginning of the occupation. A closed mental world for the sick. Dr. Kauters values ​​only methods of resolution, Dr. Rygier is a believer in strong authority, Dr. Marglewski considers psychic property a form of haunting, Dr. Nosilewska left Austria after the Nazi occupation. The writer Sekułowski seeks shelter. The young, newly arrived doctor, Stefan, refuses to remain passive in the face of the situation and events...

In what appears to be an inexplicable incident, a man drives up to a resort hotel in midwinter, throws away his car keys, enters, and proceeds to agitate everyone he meets with his urgency -- a message he is somehow unable to communicate. Then he leaves, disappearing in the snow. Later, the people he appeared to have upset have gathered to search for him and find him frostbitten, but alive. Visiting him at the sanatorium to which he has been taken, they gradually discover what was really happening.

A young actor preparing for the part of Macbeth recalls his wartime memories connected with his mentor.