Halina Garus

The Boarded Window

An anxiety-riddled woman and her husband reside in a small, secluded house in the forest. They live a relatively peaceful life until one night when the woman appears to fall sick and die.

System

An alternately restrained and outrageous adaptation of Edgar Allen Poe’s “The System of Dr. Tarr and Professor Fether” updated to the modern world.

Hotel Pacific

Set in the early 1930s, a young man finds a job as a dishwasher in a hotel and quickly works his way up the ladder. Loosely based on the novel by Henryk Worcell.

The Hourglass Sanatorium

Josef visits a dilapidated Sanatorium to see his father. Josef undertakes a strange journey through the many rooms of the sanatorium, each which conjures worlds composed of his memories, dreams and nightmares.

Markheim

Markheim impulsively kills an elderly antique dealer during an attempted robbery. From there Markheim’s sense of reality steadily dissolves in a morass of guilt and shame, until a spectral dog leads him to a shadowy figure who seems to know an awful lot about Markheim and his problems.

Kardiogram

A young doctor arrives in a sleepy village and becomes involved with secret tragedies plaguing the inhabitants.

Lokis: A Manuscript of Professor Wittembach

A pastor and ethnographer visits a remote corner of 19th-century Lithuania where folk customs associated with the area's pagan past still have a hold on the population.

The Office

Juliusz Starzewski goes to Rome to seek justice on behalf of his father.

The Criminal Who Stole a Crime

A retired police captain, Siwy, tells a reporter about his latest action, carrying on his own investigation into the mysterious death of a Ewa Salm, a.k.a. Princess. She was a witness in a case where the defendant pled guilty and was sentenced to eight years in prison. Siwy doubts the defendant's guilt and risks his life to apprehend the real killer.

Venus of Ille

A statue, fashioned in the guise of an anguished woman, is seen in a remote inn, having been recently interred from the ground. The occasion is a wedding attended by the protagonist, an unassuming man who becomes caught up in a bizarre nightmare when the groom unthinkingly sticks his wedding ring on a finger of the statue - and can’t get it off.

The Doll

Set in the 19th century Warsaw. The indolence of aristocrats who, secure with their pensions, are too lazy to undertake new business risks, frustrates Wokulski. His ability to make money is respected but his lack of family and social rank is condescended to. Because of his "help" (in secret) to "the doll's" impecunious but influential father, the girl becomes aware of his affection.

The Lodger

A pleasant, open-faced young man comes to live in a boarding house with three peculiar women.

The Codes

An elderly man returns to Poland to find his long-lost son, missing since World War II. In his quest the man is forced to contemplate the elusive and coded nature of truth itself.

The Saragossa Manuscript

During the Napoleonic wars, a Spanish officer and an opposing officer find a book written by the former's grandfather.

Blue Room

In the nineteenth century, a young couple head to the countryside to spend the weekend together. On the train they encounter a mysterious Englishman heading for the same destination. Suspicious of this individual, they take the room next to his - the titular Blue Room - and a mystery ensues...

No More Divorces

Three short segments about love.

Avatar: The Exchange of Souls

Count Olgierd Łabiński lives with his beloved wife in Paris in a beautiful palace. The Countess recalls her stay in Florence and her insistent admirer Octavius ​​de Saville. Soon, Octavius, arrives in Paris and calls for the famous Dr. Cherbonneau, suspected of being a charlatan. Citing the teachings of the East, Cherbonneau offers the patient an "avatar", a reincarnation of the soul, which takes a different body...

How to Be Loved

An actress travels from Warsaw to Paris and during the trip reflects on the last few years of her life. It goes back to the German occupation and her hiding of a fellow actor who has supposedly killed a collaborator.

Gold Dreams

The inability of a truck driver to relate to normal life after an accident for which he feels himself responsible.

The Road West

In the last days of the war an old train driver and his young assistant carry weapons to Polish soldiers on the western front.

Goodbye to the Past

An actress visits her hometown to attend the funeral of her grandfather. She realizes that the places and people from her past differ from her cherished memories.

One Room Tenants

A subjective adaptation of a well-known autobiographical novel by Zbigniew Unilowski (screenplay by Wojciech Jerzy Has with dialogues by Stanislaw Dygat). The adventures of the tenants of a sublet room in a Warsaw townhouse inhabited mostly by students and novice writers, presented against the social context of the 1930s.

The Stone Sky

The Warsaw Uprising. Five people hiding in a basement under an apartment complex get buried by the rubble when it's bombed by the Germans. With no way of escape, the people gradually descend into madness.