From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Krystyna Janda (born 18 December 1952, Starachowice, Poland) is a Polish film and theater actress best known, in the West, for playing leading roles in several films by Polish director Andrzej Wajda, including Man of Marble (Człowiek z marmuru, 1976) and Man of Iron (Człowiek z żelaza, 1981). In 1982, Janda played the lead character in Ryszard Bugajski's film Przesłuchanie (Interrogation), which first premiered only 7 years later in 1989, following the collapse of communism. Despite the film's late release, she garnered international acclaim for her performance, including winning Best Actress at the Cannes Film Festival and Polish Film Festival in 1990. Janda is also known for her leading role in the second episode of The Decalogue series of Krzysztof Kieślowski. Description above from the Wikipedia article Krystyna Janda, licensed under CC-BY-SA,full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Polish drama series which follows the tragicomic adventures of a 40-year-old urban legend in Warsaw. He is a deeply complex character, an irresponsible party animal, a serial lothario and everyone’s friend at the same time. Behind the veneer he is tormented and self-loathing, trapped by his parents and shackled by the culture and the times that shaped him....
Originally made for Polish television, “The Decalogue” focuses on the residents of a housing complex in late-Communist Poland, whose lives become subtly intertwined as they face emotional dilemmas that are at once deeply personal and universally human. Its ten hour-long films, drawing from the Ten Commandments for thematic inspiration and an overarching structure, grapple deftly with complex moral and existential questions concerning life, death, love, hate, truth, and the passage of time....
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Polish Fanfan, the first Polish series from the "cloak and dagger" - written about the "black cloud" in the press of the 70's. Axis of the plot became a dramatic episodes of the struggle for the maintenance of the Polish Prussia. They remained in feudal depending on the Republic from 1525, when Albrecht Hohenzollern secularized religious state and filed in Krakow tribute to the Polish king....
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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....
A young Polish filmmaker sets out to find out what happened to Mateusz Birkut, a bricklayer who became a propaganda hero in the 1950s but later fell out of favor and disappeared....
Jacek climbs into the taxi driven by Waldemar, tells him to drive to a remote location, then brutally strangles him, seemingly without motive....
A German stage actor finds unexpected success and mixed blessings in the popularity of his performance in a Faustian play as the Nazis take power in pre-WWII Germany. As his associates and friends flee or are ground under by the Nazi terror, the popularity of his character supercedes his own existence until he finds that his best performance is keeping up appearances for his Nazi patrons....
A small group of cosmic explorers, including a woman, leaves Earth to start a new civilization. They do not realize that within themselves they carry the end of their own dream. They die one by one, while their children revert to a primitive native culture, creating new myths and a new god....
A famous Polish journalist presents a problem for the powers-that-be when he displays his full political skill and knowledge on a television show featuring questions and answers on a world conference by a panel of journalists. His enemies take away his privileges when he is away. The shock of being "unwanted" parallels a deeper disappointment in his private life: his wife has an affair with a jealous young rival, and after 15 years of marriage and two daughters wants a divorce. She offers no exp...
The film was inspired by one of the most important documentaries shot by Krzysztof Kieślowski, Talking Heads (1980). The director asked his interlocutors seemingly simple questions, such as “Who are you?” and “What do you want?”....
A story about women, set in the present and in 1950s Warsaw. Sabina, a quiet, shy woman who has just turned thirty lacks a man in her life. Her mother knows all about it and tries at all costs to find her daughter a good candidate for a husband. The whole situation is controlled by the grandmother, an eccentric lady with a sharp tongue from whom no secrets can be kept....
A Polish lieutenant from the Royal Air Force comes home with his British wife and faces political persecution....
Sebastien Grenier, a former French spy, is working as a financial analyst in Zurich. However, his peaceful existence starts to disintegrate when he is recruited by a top French intelligence operative to discover how one of their own secret agents was found out and executed in broad daylight....
In Stalinist Poland, cabaret singer Tonia decides to spend the evening drinking with a group of friends. The next morning, she awakes to find that, for reasons unknown to her, she has been jailed as a political prisoner. As prison officials interrogate, torture and humiliate her, she fights for survival and to maintain her innocence by refusing to sign a false confession. As her years of imprisonment pass, her relationship with her captors grows more complicated....
A mysterious woman recounts the rise and fall of Nikodem "Nikoś" Skotarczak, one of the biggest gangsters in Poland's history. Inspired by a true story....
As an aging woman married to a workaholic doctor by chance meets a young man who makes her feel young again. All of this is films by a director making a film about her which cuts in and out of the on camera and off camera drama....
Dorota Geller, a married woman, faces a dilemma involving her sick husband's prognosis. Her husband's doctor, who believes in God, sweared about it in vain....
Tomasz, a doctor, and atheist, is diagnosed with cancer. His ex-wife offers him the money for treatment in Paris, but his lung cancer is past the operating stage. Facing imminent death, he questions the beliefs he has held all his life and starts experimenting with both his own life and those of others....
The world has been ravaged by nuclear war. The planet is frozen and radiation kills anyone or anything that ventures outside of 'The Dome'. Soft is a shepherd for the last remnants of humanity who have gathered together as they await rescue from a mysterious craft known only as 'The Ark.' He wanders among the masses, performing his regular daily tasks; keeping morale from plummeting, wooing prostitutes, squashing rebellions, and sometimes feeding the hungry. But as the true and sinister nature ...
A Polish woman and a German man fall in love against the odds and decide to set up a cemetery for exiles. But can their daring venture survive the call of the toad? Adapted from Gunter Grass’ novel....
A journalist tries to balance the duties of marriage and motherhood while researching a piece on college women who work as prostitutes to pay their tuition....
Pernat finds himself in a police interrogation, accused of a murder, and unable to recall any details of the crime, or even his own life. He's released back into a world of raving lunatics and deranged dentists, murderous doctors and scientists who believe the secret of human creation is inside the walls of a cast-iron oven....
Difficulty of human relations in a 3-cornered tale: a neurotic woman, idealistic young man and his mother. Tomek is a clean-cut, high-minded geography student. He lives with his mother Zofia, a sensitive, practicing Catholic, like her son. When he meets Julia, a depressed woman older than he, he first tries to comfort her, then invites her to stay with him and his mother. Tomek makes a trip to West Berlin to visit his well-off father. He refuses to take money from him and looks for work as a hou...
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Daddy is the story of a divorced father fighting for the right to raise his 7-year-old daughter. When his marriage falls apart, he decides to kidnap his daughter rather than let the court award custody to his mentally ill wife, whom he deems unfit to raise their child. But as he quickly finds out, it's easier to be a real man than it is to be a real father....
The main character - a man who suffers from alcoholism - wants to change his tumultuous life. The day before Christmas Eve he receives a gift from his son - a yellow scarf. A gift is a kind of talisman he receives from loved ones, and every time he loses it. When after another banquet he falls into delirium, his ex-wife and secretary bring him to his mother. She helps him to sober up and arranges holiday celebration for two of them. She gives her son another yellow scarf, in belief that it will...
In October 1936, a high official in the Austrian government receives a letter from a German Jewish woman with whom he had an affair in 1925 asking him to help place an 11-year-old, half Jewish boy in a good Austrian school. Is the child his? Should he help? And above all should he help now, at a time when Nazis are becoming powerful in Austria?...
Poland, Christmastime. A band of hyperintelligent, bloodthirsty Martians take over the country and enlist hapless television newscaster Iron Ide as the voice of their propaganda machine. But when Iron dares to go off message, he makes an enemy even greater than the aliens—the state itself....
An organised arts teacher has only one main problem in life, which is his father – a painter always going from one party to the next. When the father lives through his second heart attack and still refuses to change his lifestyle, Julius will have to find a way to influence his behaviour....
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....
A tough cop but his life in ruins. His superiors are only looking for a reason to sack him. The girl is 17 years old and lives on the street. As the cop helps her one night, she steals his gun and flees. He should report the loss of his gun to his boss, so he has to search for the girl. At the Dutch border it falls into the power of the police! Henceforth they are on the run, without a plan and without a goal .....
Students from the Faculty of Acting find out that their graduation film will be made by the famous director Gajda. The news is electrifying – everyone wants to be in the cast. As rehearsals begin, the students’ personalities, dreams and ambitions are revealed...
Set in 1905. The story focuses on a young and inexperienced man in a revolutionary execution squad. He does his killing job out of idealism, and for the love of a woman. The young student murders a Russian spy and is afterwards arrested by the police. Much to his surprise he is released after a session with the traitor-judge, hinting at some leaks in the organisation. Student reports his suspicions back to the organisation, but in response is given a new hit mission....
A violinist in a provincial Polish orchestra, whose husband is the director of the ensemble, on a visit to the US ties up with the world- renowned symphony conductor. As it turns out he was once in love with violinist's mother. The conductor, a slightly unstable hypochondriac, returns to Poland to lead the provincial orchestra. He also tries to revive old love affair using the violinist as a surrogate of her mother. Her husband is resentful of the conductor for both personal and professional rea...
The story about the friendship between two women, family problems and difficult childhood....
Anna, a nurse, meets her wartime lover Marcel in 1951. Learning that he has been sentenced to death for his role in the Home Army, she hides him in her cellar for five years. She gets pregnant with his child and has the baby out of the wedlock. Despite the hardships and gossip she holds much better than he. In 1956 when the political climate changes, he resurfaces and is arrested, but then acquitted by the court....
The love story of Stanisław Połaniecki and the beautiful Marynia Pławicka, set in the scenery of manor houses and Warsaw from the end of the 19th century....
Polish musical film with leading Polish rock bands from the '80...
Polish-born Russian subject Cezary Baryka comes of age during a tumultous period of ten years from 1914 to 1924, during which he witnesses revolution, rebirth of Poland, war with the Soviets and communist plots....
Rainer Dulsky, a professor of psychiatry from Switzerland, comes to Melania, the granddaughter of Mrs. Dulska. He feels he’s got something in common with the tenement house in which the Dulski family live... Melania, a film director, intrigued by her family history joins Rainer in his research. Their discoveries will take them back to the past full of secrets that were meant to stay hidden forever. The Dulski family have much on their conscience......
December, 1981. World-class champion Ewa Jaskólska is looking forward to a cruise around the world with her yacht. At her farewell party, several people are present that are connected to the new Solidarnośc movement. The guests are filmed by a TV journalist. The introduction of the martial law in Poland leads to problems for all people involved. Can Ewa go back to her home country after these dramatic changes in Poland?...
Extensive dialogue and the tight focus of a single apartment setting marks this romantic and politically symbolic drama about Malgorzata, a Polish photographer (Krystyna Janda) and her married French lover Paul (Sami Frey). The two rendezvous in West Berlin to spend some time together before Malgorzata has to go back to Warsaw and Paul returns to his wife and daughter....
Set in 1989, story of a man beat up by two ex-policemen and left to die in a dump. Marek survives after the brain surgery that leaves him amnesiac. He wanders through the city, sought by his assilant, who fear he will testify against them. Marek finds shelter with a girlfriend/bagwoman who supposedly was once queen of Paris boulevards. Marek regains his memory just as the villains are to get him. He eventually returns to his house only to find out that his mother died and his brother left for Au...
In the midst of WW I, a doctor and a lawyer team up to turn a ramshackle old mountain chateau into a sanatorium/health spa that caters to the afflicted from most every stratum of European society, most of whom show up with false hope in their hearts and plenty of equally false identities. Even the proprietors have a few deceptions, chief among them is the part of the resort where they provide shelter for dying and horribly maimed soldiers. Still the atmosphere of this high-class convalescent hom...
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How was it possible that a single man influenced contemporary world so significantly? This film is an attempt to capture the phenomenon of a common man’s metamorphosis into a charismatic leader — an attempt to see how a Gdansk shipyard electrician fighting for workers’ rights awakened a hidden desire for freedom in millions of people....
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Jacek, an angry drifter, murders a taxi driver, brutally and without motive. His case is assigned to Piotr, an idealistic young lawyer who is morally opposed to the death penalty, and their interactions take on an emotional honesty that throws into stark relief for Piotr the injustice of killing of any kind....
Rafal takes care of his dysfunctional carefree mother who is more interested in men, pills and alcohol than in the problems of her young yet very mature son....
This film of a glitzy showbiz world by director Peter Keglevic in his first feature-length effort recounts the saga of a married torch singer whose numerous lovers are meant to steady her nerves and a saxophone player who loves her but cannot get his own act together. Singing and cinematography are pluses....
The unusual bond between a blind female writer and an acclaimed poet changes their lives and forms an exceptional creative cooperation, free of politics and the complexities of mundane life....
In Tuscany, Maria's stable family life begins to erode as her relationship with a young immigrant develops against a backdrop of terrorism and eroding democracy....
A handsome young chauffeur hired by a powerful and charismatic businesswoman discovers he has been made an unwitting party to fraud, but his moral outrage is complicated: the married man allowed himself to be seduced by the woman, who threatens to tell the man's wife....
Francois Korb is an arms manufacturer who sold both to the Germans and the Allied forces. Korb's home life is less than ideal, since his wife is having an affair with his brother, and his young son is inseparable from a teddy bear. To remedy the son's situation, the parents take in a little refugee girl as a temporary companion and playmate, and the two children become fast friends....
Barbara leads a stable life, is fulfilled professionally and has a loving family. Her foster daughter Alicja, who learns that she is adopted, decides to find her biological mother. When Alicja finds the real mother, the life of the main characters changes, and the positive relationships that linked them become blurred....
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Fleeing from despair after losing those dearest to him, the hero hides in a safe land of memories, where time stands still and all those dear to him are alive....