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Krystyna Janda (born 18 December 1952, Starachowice, Poland) is a Polish film and theater actress best known, in the West, for playing leading roles in several films by Polish director Andrzej Wajda, including Man of Marble (Człowiek z marmuru, 1976) and Man of Iron (Człowiek z żelaza, 1981).
In 1982, Janda played the lead character in Ryszard Bugajski's film Przesłuchanie (Interrogation), which first premiered only 7 years later in 1989, following the collapse of communism.
Despite the film's late release, she garnered international acclaim for her performance, including winning Best Actress at the Cannes Film Festival and Polish Film Festival in 1990.
Janda is also known for her leading role in the second episode of The Decalogue series of Krzysztof Kieślowski.
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How was it possible that a single man influenced contemporary world so significantly? This film is an attempt to capture the phenomenon of a common man’s metamorphosis into a charismatic leader — an attempt to see how a Gdansk shipyard electrician fighting for workers’ rights awakened a hidden desire for freedom in millions of people.
A story about women, set in the present and in 1950s Warsaw. Sabina, a quiet, shy woman who has just turned thirty lacks a man in her life. Her mother knows all about it and tries at all costs to find her daughter a good candidate for a husband. The whole situation is controlled by the grandmother, an eccentric lady with a sharp tongue from whom no secrets can be kept.
Tato is the story of a divorced father fighting for the right to raise his 7-year-old daughter. When his marriage falls apart, he decides to kidnap his daughter rather than let the court award custody to his mentally ill wife, whom he deems unfit to raise their child. But as he quickly finds out, it’s easier to be a real man than it is to be a real father.
In Stalinist Poland, cabaret singer Tonia decides to spend the evening drinking with a group of friends. The next morning, she awakes to find that, for reasons unknown to her, she has been jailed as a political prisoner. As prison officials interrogate, torture and humiliate her, she fights for survival and to maintain her innocence by refusing to sign a false confession. As her years of imprisonment pass, her relationship with her captors grows more complicated.
A small group of cosmic explorers, including a woman, leaves Earth to start a new civilization. They do not realize that within themselves they carry the end of their own dream. They die one by one, while their children revert to a primitive native culture, creating new myths and a new god.
The world has been ravaged by nuclear war. The planet is frozen and radiation kills anyone or anything that ventures outside of 'The Dome'. Soft is a shepherd for the last remnants of humanity who have gathered together as they await rescue from a mysterious craft known only as 'The Ark.' He wanders among the masses, performing his regular daily tasks; keeping morale from plummeting, wooing prostitutes, squashing rebellions, and sometimes feeding the hungry. But as the true and sinister nature of 'The Dome' comes to light, Soft must ask himself if humanity is worth saving...
Sebastien Grenier, a former French spy, is working as a financial analyst in Zurich. However, his peaceful existence starts to disintegrate when he is recruited by a top French intelligence operative to discover how one of their own secret agents was found out and executed in broad daylight.
Poland, Christmastime. A band of hyperintelligent, bloodthirsty Martians take over the country and enlist hapless television newscaster Iron Ide as the voice of their propaganda machine. But when Iron dares to go off message, he makes an enemy even greater than the aliens—the state itself.
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.
A German stage actor finds unexpected success and mixed blessings in the popularity of his performance in a Faustian play as the Nazis take power in pre-WWII Germany. As his associates and friends flee or are ground under by the Nazi terror, the popularity of his character supercedes his own existence until he finds that his best performance is keeping up appearances for his Nazi patrons.
Pernat finds himself in a police interrogation, accused of a murder, and unable to recall any details of the crime, or even his own life. He's released back into a world of raving lunatics and deranged dentists, murderous doctors and scientists who believe the secret of human creation is inside the walls of a cast-iron oven.
A violinist in a provincial Polish orchestra, whose husband is the director of the ensemble, on a visit to the US ties up with the world- renowned symphony conductor. As it turns out he was once in love with violinist's mother. The conductor, a slightly unstable hypochondriac, returns to Poland to lead the provincial orchestra. He also tries to revive old love affair using the violinist as a surrogate of her mother. Her husband is resentful of the conductor for both personal and professional reasons.
A famous Polish journalist presents a problem for the powers-that-be when he displays his full political skill and knowledge on a television show featuring questions and answers on a world conference by a panel of journalists. His enemies take away his privileges when he is away. The shock of being "unwanted" parallels a deeper disappointment in his private life: his wife has an affair with a jealous young rival, and after 15 years of marriage and two daughters wants a divorce. She offers no explanations as he tries to untie these problems himself. All the moves he makes are the wrong ones. He takes on drinking heavily with students eager to attend his seminar after discovering the class has been canceled. The journalist, once suave and commanding, is reduced to silence.