Jadwiga Kuryluk

A young, idealistic poet, turns his back on civilization and goes to small, backwood village, rents a bed in the house of an old woman, and decides to make his living as a lumberjack. Soon he realizes that the world around him is far from perfect.

Young master Henry and his peer, the son of a rich Tatar landowner Salim Mirza, fall in love with the same girl. Hania is an orphan, the daughter of Henry's father's faithful servant. There is a fierce rivalry between the young men for the girl's favor, and it ends in a duel in which both are wounded. After recovering, Henry learns that Hania has passed smallpox and has been disfigured. The girl rejects Selim's proposals and joins a convent.

1956. Stefan Madejski, a former KBW lieutenant, is released from prison and rehabilitated. Ten years ago he fought against the gangs, but his brutal and ruthless methods aroused opposition. Because he let go of a band member, his former AK unit colleague, he was brought before a military court and sentenced to fifteen years. Now he is trying to find the people who put him in prison. These encounters give him nothing but bitterness.

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.

Tadeusz Krzakoski, the director of a failing state-owned company, is married with problems. His mistress, the daughter of a Communist party bigwig, says she's pregnant and Tadeusz knows he'll have to marry her to save his reputation and his job. But divorce is never simple and Bareja's screwball comedies are never boring.

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.

Zenon Ziembiewicz, a young, budding journalist, comes to his parents' manor house for a vacation. Here he enters into an affair with the lovely Justyna Bogutówna, the daughter of a cook. When the canicule comes to an end, Zenon packs his bags and leaves for Paris to study. Returning after a year with a doctorate in political science, he makes a fast and glamorous career. He becomes the editor-in-chief of the local newspaper and, soon after, mayor of the city. He also marries Elzbieta Biecka, but still does not break up with Justyna.

40-year-old engineer Marek Kołodziejski comes to his hometown after fifteen years. He wants to take revenge on his friends who kicked him out of the band for appropriating the authorship of the project.

A young doctor from the lower classes is helped in his career by a rich woman. When he comes back from study in Paris he takes a job at a watering spa. He comes up against the owners when he tries to help the poor.

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.