Irena Byrska

A piece of reportage realized by the Polish Army Film Studios at the end of the war. It tells a story of Warsaw children who started a camp in the summer of 1944 in Stoczek Lyczkowski. The authors show the children’s life, it’s full of small amounts of happiness and many problems. Near the camp the war is still on, the children’s relatives are still in danger.

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Witek runs after a train. Three variations follow on how such a seemingly banal incident could influence the rest of Witek's life.

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Bearing traces of the old Anton Chekhov play The Wedding, The Contract is set during an "arranged" ceremony. The bride and groom barely know each other, but this matters not at all to their tradition-bound families. At the last minute, the bride balks. Only slightly nonplused, the groom's father, a status-seeking doctor, decides to go ahead with the expensive reception anyway. Polish director Krzysz Zanussi uses this scenario to stick it to capitalist corruption, and to society's destruction of the individual spirit. Leslie Caron, the one recognizable member of the cast, is outstanding as a wealthy, over-the-hill ballerina who happens to be a kleptomaniac.

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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.

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