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.
In a bucolic Polish hamlet, the tense relationship between a father and son reaches a boiling point when the men lose their hearts to the same woman and vie for her affections. Based on Wladyslaw Reymont's Nobel Prize-winning book and helmed by Jan Rybkowski, this theatrical release (starring Krzystof Chamiec, Wladyslaw Hancza and Emilia Krakowska) was culled from a 13-episode miniseries that aired on Polish television in 1972.
Ewa Bonecka, a young student about to start school in a new place finds herself without a place to sleep after she is declined a room in a women-only hotel. Helped by a pleasant policeman, Piotr, she tries to find a lodging in the strange town full of thieves and petty troublemakers.
While visiting Warsaw, Hanka falls for a record-breaking bricklayer. She returns to the city to work at construction sites and prove that women can work as hard as men