Movies: Krzysztof Zanussi

At the end of the 19th century, somewhere in the outskirts of the Russian Empire, a doctor administers a lethal overdose of ether to a young woman – the object of his desire. After getting away with his crime, he finds employment in a fortress, where...

Filip buys an 8mm movie camera when his first child is born. Because it's the first camera in town, he's named official photographer by the local Party boss. His horizons widen when he is sent to regional film festivals with his first works but his f...

An internist is accused of murdering the sixth of his seven wives. During the court hearing, numerous statements, especially those made by his former wives, confront him with his past. Finally acquitted, the doctor loses himself in feelings of deepes...

An Uruguayan diplomat brings his new wife with him on a business trip to Poland in the summer immediately preceding the outbreak of World War II....

Difficulty of human relations in a 3-cornered tale: a neurotic woman, idealistic young man and his mother. Tomek is a clean-cut, high-minded geography student. He lives with his mother Zofia, a sensitive, practicing Catholic, like her son. When he me...

A brilliant but troubled professor confronts his fears while working on his design of a space rocket....

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 balk...

An actor visits his father in a nursing home to study his mannerisms in preparations for the role of Faust....

Zanussi has described the film as his most autobiographical work. A young boy in post-World War II, Communist-dominated Poland, whose father's decision to remain in Britain after the war has made his family politically-suspect with the local Party au...

Made for the Venice Film Festival's 70th anniversary, seventy filmmakers made a short film between 60 and 90 seconds long on their interpretation of the future of cinema....

An unsuspecting student thinks that the wife of an arms dealer is unhappy, but in reality she appears as cynical as her capitalist man....

A moral conflict between a young assistant and an associate professor arises during a university linguistics camp....

Indian documentary about Indian film history and P. K. Nair, the founder of the National Film Archive of India and guardian of Indian cinema. He built the archive can by can in a country where the archiving of cinema was considered unimportant....

This heroic story follows the life of Karol Wojtyla, a Polish Roman catholic who ascends the throne of St. Peter as Pope John Paul II. As a young boy, Karol is a bright and talented student. Archbishop Sapieha recognizes the very special, moving qual...

Julie's son is dying of cancer and her marriage falling apart. She goes to Poland in search of a man who can heal using his hands. Julie finds not only a magical cure for her son, but also comes across a love so pure it begins to heal the aching in...

A rational young man and his devoutly Catholic wife believe their sickly son may have leukemia. As they await further tests over a weekend they both struggle with a crisis of faith in both science and Catholicism....

Feuerreiter is an elegant period drama that begins in Frankfurt in 1796. Through his friend, Baron von Sinclair, romantic and rebellious poet Friedrich Hölderlin secures the position of a private tutor in the home of a banker named Gontard. He is soo...

A young man is confronted with corrupt and vindictive colleagues at work and negligent officials at the hospital where his mother is dying. As he searches quixotically for a steadfast moral code by which to live, he suffers from the knowledge of huma...

Henry Kesdi is a silenced classical composer and a survivor of the Holocaust. He is coaxed out from retirement by an inspired musicologist, Stefan, who convinces him to compose a complex symphony on his neglected piano. As a help Kesdi gets his new m...

Maria Zmarz-Koczanowicz directed this insightful TV documentary (2005) tracing the Polish filmmaker's career. Former classmates reminisce about Kieslowski's happy beginnings at the Lodz film school and how his dissatisfaction with some of his early d...