Zdzisław Szymański

Five and Half of Pale Joe (2025)

A young journalist from Warsaw goes to a small town of Kamienica to prepare a report on a motorcycle gang. ...

The Mother of the Kings (1987)

Made in 1982, shelved for five years. Story opens with Lucja Krol's husband under the tram. She gives birth to her fourth son on the floor of their new apartment. Neighbor Wiktor, a communist intellectual, befriends the poverty-stricken family but is soon ...

Michał (1984)

Michał is among the soldiers quartered in a village near Lublin. By accident, he goes to the palace and visits the magnificent building, where he meets a widow Maria. Meanwhile, local peasants do not want to wait for the start of land reform. They appoint ...

Zabawa w chowanego (1984)

Na odsiecz Wiedniowi (1983)

Film about the famous Battle of Vienna and the events surrounding it. ...

Śpiewy po rosie (1982)

A portrait of a small, contemporary village, shaken by the return of one of its residents from prison. Zdzich returns from prison to a small village on the edge of the Augustów Primeval Forest. He was accused of shooting a militiaman and, despite the clea ...

Childish Questions (1981)

A young architect is locked up in prison. He recalls his uncompromising youth and gradual sliding into the moral swamp of compromises. He was not alone. A group of his friends, dreamers and glass house builders, accompanied him. ...

Jeśli serce masz bijące (1981)

A group of Polish boys is opposed to a German teacher who aims to Germanise the young men. ...

Morning Stars (1980)

A Soviet tank breaks through the front line during the January 1945 offensive. ...

Zerwane cumy (1979)

Psychological drama; a retired sailor, after 40 years of absence, returns to his native village to spend the rest of his life there. After forty years of work at sea, Petty Officer Ignacy Krzeminski returns to his home village in the Suwałki region. The m ...

Hospital of the Transfiguration (1979)

Shortly after the beginning of World War 2 a young idealist doctor is employed in a psychiatric hospital, where his notions of proper care for the patients are challenged by staff and the German occupation. ...

Roman and Magda (1979)

A moral action drama showing a crisis and breakup of a married couple from the perspective of the both spouses, Roman and Magda. Through flashbacks the film reveals a shocking study of the disintegration of the relationship between two adult people and the ...

What Will You Do When You Catch Me? (1978)

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 divorc ...

Quiet Is the Night (1978)

In 1920s Poland, a police commissioner leads the investigation into a series of brutal murders of young boys as the case grows increasingly unsettling and personal. ...

Koty to dranie (1978)

Retired Sypniewski stands before a bizarre task - he must drown kittens. ...

Passion (1978)

The last days in the life of Edward Dembowski (1822-1846), the organizer of the Kraków Uprising in 1846. The informal leader of the uprising, determined to fight for the unification of Polish lands and the liberation of the peasants, negotiates with other ...

The Gorgon Case (1977)

In 1931, just before the New Year, in a house of architect Henryk Zaremba scream rips the night. The daughter of Zaremba is found killed in her bedroom, obviously killed with a pickaxe. The police arrives and starts the investigation. Rita Gorgonova, the g ...

Operation Arsenal (1977)

In Nazi-occupied Warsaw, teenage scouts Alek, Rudy, and Zośka risk their lives pulling down a swastika and hoisting the Polish flag atop the German "Zachęta" cultural center and then blowing up a mobile propaganda cinema. ...

The Leaves Have Fallen (1975)

Two years after the war, during a train trip, Henryk (20) recollects the occupation period. He passes different train stations and recollects various situations from the past: his family life, working in a garage, guerrilla warfare, the fear that accompani ...

Nights and Days (1975)

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 pl ...

Promotion (1975)

After getting a university degree, Marek Grzyb comes back to his village and does his best to convince the people to modernize. ...

The Wicket Gate (1974)

Accomplished playwright supervises the stage rehearsals for his new play away from home. He rents a room at a private house, which is owned by mother and daughter. Wiktor gets entangled in the two women's bizarre relationship. ...

Man - Woman Wanted (1973)

Stanisław Maria Rochowicz, a bumbling art historian, is falsely accused of stealing a painting. The alleged thief faces five years in prison. Desperate, he decides to hide in disguise as a woman until he can paint a copy of the stolen canvas. Lacking mean ...

A Slip-Up (1972)

A young man strikes up an ill-fated romance with a married woman. ...

Agent #1 (1972)

Jerzy Szajnowicz-Ivanov, the son of a Polish mother and a Russian father, raised in Greece, reports to the Carpathian Brigade in the spring of 1941. While the Poles are wary of him at first, he proves his worth by taking part in several sabotage actions a ...

Tell-Tale Hearts (1972)

The sight of a wounded neighbor causes anxiety in a young man. ...

I Hate Mondays (1971)

An acute case of Mondayitis in Warsaw. Interwoven stories of a few inhabitants of Warsaw, including one very unlucky Italian on a governmental mission and a charitable Polish American. ...

Makbet (1969)

A staging of William Shakespeare's tragedy, directed in 1969 by Andrzej Wajda. The roles of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are played by Tadeusz Łomnicki and Magda Zawadzka - actors who at that time gained popularity in the series "Pan Wołodyjowski". This perv ...

When Love Was a Crime (1968)

A war drama showing the functioning of Hitler's "racial purity" law, forbidding foreign workers from any contact with Germany. Foreigners on forced labor in Nazi Germany. ...

Westerplatte Resists (1967)

Westerplatte is a small peninsula at the entry to the Gdańsk Harbour. Before World War II, it functioned as a Polish ammunition depot in the Free City of Danzig. Its crew consisted of one infantry company and a group of civilians, 182 people in total. It ...

Cooked Doves (1966)

A young poet is hired to boost the morale of water pump workers. ...

Obok prawdy (1965)

After a disaster in the mine, Łopot, a technician, protects the perpetrator. He soon faces a moral dilemma. ...

The First Day of Freedom (1964)

Freed Polish soldiers are trapped in a small town in Germany during the last days of World War II. After a doctor's daughter is raped by a concentration camp worker, the Poles allow her and her father to stay in the house that is their temporary quarters. ...

Barwy walki (1964)

Świętokrzyskie Mountains, 1944. A People's Army unit receives orders to transport a party delegate outside the front line, while heavy fighting is going on between the Germans and resistance fighters in the region. ...

Wounded in the Forest (1964)

While hiding from the Germans in the forest, young Polish corporal tries hard to fulfill his order to take care of a wounded lieutenant and wait for the doctor and transportation to come. ...

Far Is the Road (1963)

After WWII a soldier returns to his Polish homeland from Scotland. ...

Między brzegami (1963)

A small fishing village between the sea and the lake. One day, when all the men went out to catch, a viper bitten Grandpa Filip and little Madzia was severely injured by a misfire. Holidaymakers with a motorboat refuse to help. Filip decides to take the gi ...

Mężczyźni na wyspie (1962)

Two men working as lawn mowers fight over a woman. ...

Rodzina Milcarków (1962)

The fate of a working-class family during the third Silesian Uprising. ...

Zemsta (1957)

Two noblemen live in one castle, which they both own half of. After a wall dividing both halves of the castle gets damaged they start an intense rivalry. ...

Trzy kobiety (1957)

Three women, ex-prisoners of a Nazi death camp, decide to live together after the war. ...

Nikodem Dyzma (1956)

Nikodem Dyzma is a poor dancer who comes to Warsaw to find a job. The problem is that nobody wants to hire him. One day he finds an invitation to the party with very important people and decides to attend. A small accident at the party makes him the hero o ...

Shadow (1956)

A man has been found dead after having been hurled from a train. As security agents, police and a medical examiner piece together his identity, three accounts emerge: one set during World War II, one in the immediate aftermath of the war, and one in contem ...

Podhale w ogniu (1956)

Podhale, 17th century – the story of an anti-nobility peasant rebellion led by Aleksander Kostka Napierski. ...

The Warsaw Debut (1951)

Polish composer Stanisław Moniuszko fights for the right to stage his opera "Halka". ...

W chłopskie ręce (1947)

Preparations for a rural folk festival. The shop manager, GS Patyk, quietly resells the goods to a private shopkeeper. ...

Forbidden Songs (1947)

Set during the German occupation of Warsaw during WWII, this musical tells the story of several inhabitants of the same tenement house. ...