Movies by Jan Nowicki

Vera – The Hard Way to Enlightenment

Vera – The Hard Way to Enlightenment

Barrier

Barrier

A dream-like meditation on post-industrial life in Communist Poland.

The Spiral

The Spiral

In what appears to be an inexplicable incident, a man drives up to a resort hotel in midwinter, throws away his car keys, enters, and proceeds to agitate everyone he meets with his urgency -- a message he is somehow unable to communicate. Then he leaves, disappearing in the snow. Later, the people he appeared to have upset have gathered to search for him and find him frostbitten, but alive. Visiting him at the sanatorium to which he has been taken, they gradually discover what was really happening.

13 piętro

13 piętro

A young man gets stuck in an elevator just as it passes the 13th floor.

Fetus

Fetus

This drama follows the dilemma of a young, unwillingly pregnant wife who gives her child up for adoption by a businesswoman. Anna doesn't need another mouth to feed. She can barely afford to care for the two she already has so when she discovers that she is six weeks pregnant she readily accepts the cash offer from Terez, her tough boss at the store where she works. If she will isolate herself throughout the pregnancy, secretly bear the child and immediately allow Terez to sign for it, Anna will receive $50,000. Most of the story then focuse...

Notes on Love

Notes on Love

Poet-filmmaker Jørgen Leth taps his own earliest inspirational veins by free-floating through a camera/microscope-enhanced set of poems with love as their first and final subject. For example, how a tropical island woman prepares for a meeting with her lover. The film was shot partly in the South Pacific with more than a nod to social anthropoliogist B. Malinowski's historical work The Sexual Life of Savages.

Upstairs, Downstairs

Upstairs, Downstairs

Based on Michał Choromański's novel. Young artist arrives at Zakopane and meets local people.

The Girls of Nowolipki

The Girls of Nowolipki

Coming of age story of four girls living in the same poor district of Warsaw just before the outbreak of World War One.

Ich liebe dich - April! April!

Ich liebe dich - April! April!

The law student Caroline and the assistant professor Tom are husband and wife, but they keep their marriage a secret. While Caroline is afraid of annoying her mother Hella who ever since her divorce twenty years ago distrusts men in general, Tom dreads the criticism of his professor, a family law specialist who objects to the concept of marriage. By chance, Caroline gets hold of some juicy information: Her mother and the professor used to be a couple and she is their child. With almost missionary zeal she addresses herself to the task of con...

The Seventh Room

The Seventh Room

An expressionist biography of Edith Stein, who converted from the Jewish faith to the Catholic one and became a Carmelite sister. She would die in a German concentration camp.

Diary for My Father and My Mother

Diary for My Father and My Mother

This story follows a young student, who is orphaned as she grows to adulthood in the shadow of the 1956 Hungarian uprising. Coming from the Communist intelligentsia, she sees her friends and family react differently. Her lover, a married factory manager, supports the patriots and later assists fellow workers in staging a strike. Meanwhile her sister and others express anger at being forced from their homes during the revolution and continue to express a hatred for the rebels afterwards. But in the end they realize that for all people, real l...

The Two of Them

The Two of Them

Looking for a safe place to live after being harassed by her husband, a depressive and violent man, Juli stays at a women's shelter run by Mária.