Jowita Popow-Romanowska

The social and independence ferment triggered in the fall of 1980 by Solidarity created an opportunity for dialogue between the nation and the ruling communists. Dialogue, not force. As always, students quickly joined the "rebellion and pressure." They wanted autonomy for Polish universities and their own independent representation, as well as sovereignty, without the "leading role of the party." When these dreams were not fulfilled, at the beginning of 1981, students at the University of Łódź went on their first long strike, which ended in success, and when martial law was declared in December 1981, the same students rushed to protest in the form of an occupation strike, which ended in pacification. The film consists of statements by the protagonists and witnesses of those events, archival footage, and staged sequences.