Masquerade

Realistic depiction of the Polish martial law in 1981. John Malecki is a young actor with good career prospects in a Warsaw theater, preparing to play Hamlet, his dream role. John plans to go to Sweden. Any involvement with the new Solidarnośc movement might put his visa to Sweden at risk. But staying neutral in these times is not an easy task.

Ewa, a 35-year-old assistant at the chemistry department, has been hearing voices for a long time—a series of sounds that cause her to have nervous breakdowns. She becomes involved with Marek, a doctoral student at the electronics department, who, after numerous experiments, concludes that an extraterrestrial civilization has chosen Ewa as its medium. When it turns out that the cause of the voices was a quartz filling, which acts as a radio diode, Ewa tries to prevent Marek from attacking her. She does not want to lose contact with him. Although he exposes her and she gets married, they undertake joint experiments, because now he, while undergoing treatment in a closed facility, hears voices…

The story begins in March of 1968, the days of students protests. A hot- headed student protests the Dean's decision to expell a fellow student on fake accusation charges, upon which he drops out of university rather than make a compromise. He loses everything in the process: his girlfriend, housing privileges - he becomes a coal deliverer. On the job he witnesses an accident that causes death of a fellow worker. He decides to write a story, which is good and a publishing house wants to print it, but only after some corrections are made. He refuses again and the story is not printed. Finally, a story is commercialized and made into a succesful film and brings fame to the original author.

A well-regarded engineer in a big enterprise is hounded by trumped up attacks on his integrity when he delves too deeply into how bonuses are handled by the management. He gets into an argument with the guard, is arrested and subsequently fired. An old friend, a journalist, tries to sort things out but the victim's stubbornness and past problems with his wife lead to lossess by both.

Night, fog, rain. A narrow Masurian road. Speeding trucks. A lonely man behind the wheel of an old car is rushing home to his daughter's concert. He overtakes the trucks, rushing towards his destiny. That destiny is a drug-addicted girl dancing on the road and waving a burning jacket like a torch. Miraculously, the trucks avoid her. The man is the commander of the local police station, the girl is a drug addict from a nearby rehab center. She will die under the wheels, and he will do everything he can to explain what she was doing on the road at night. He will make heroic attempts not to become like those around him: corrupt authorities and police, drug dealers selling their wares even under the mayor's window. His name is Leon Kamelski, but everyone calls him Chameleon.

In the winter of 1943 two young Jews, Alek and Fryda, escape, via sewer tunnels, from the atrocities underway in Warsaw ghetto. Alek, entrusted with undeveloped photos of the horrors within, makes his way to a supposedly safe apartment only to find it occupied by Germans. Another tenant, a pole Stephania, abruptly offers to shelter him in her spacious apartment. She comforts him and they make love that very night. Stefania is uncommonly generous and willing to jeopardize her own safety by hiding a Jew. She even goes to a nearby church and rescues Fryda. But Fryda is ungrateful and proceeds to sabotage the trio's safety in insidious ways.

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.

Television play adaptation of Wajda's stage play of Stanisław Wyspiański's November Night. The drama takes place on two levels - historical and metaphorical. The first one is almost a chronicle of several hours of the uprising - it shows the drama of the attitudes of Poles at the beginning of the armed struggle, in confrontation with the attitude of Grand Duke Constantine, the Tsar's deputy in Poland. The second one presents the world of gods playing out their arguments. Man becomes a plaything in their hands, but it is he who experiences his fear, heroism and hope.

A picture of the broken world at the end of the century. A couple of contemporary young Polish intellectuals, artistic souls. They are sensitive beyond mediocrity, hence the daily hustle and bustle is not an excuse for them to live: they want to give it a meaning and shape of their own choosing. They search for their "roots", only to find out once again that, apart from natural tenderness, they have nothing in common with their families. There is no question of rebellion, of generational strife. Today's 30-year-olds face only technical, not sentimental, obstacles; childhood memories of parents not seen every day sink in, the image of a child living apart indifferently.

A young woman and a man considerably older than her head off to a holiday cottage. The idyllic atmosphere of a carefree Saturday gives no indication of the drama that is about to unfold between them.