Director: Andrzej Wajda
Cast: Jerzy Radziwiłowicz, Krystyna Janda, Tadeusz Łomnicki
1976, 153’
The year 1976. In the corridor of the television building Agnieszka –an almost graduate film maker – is persuading an 'important' editor into making a movie about Mateusz Birkut, a bricklayer and labor leader, whose brilliant career ended suddenly and unexpectedly sometime around 1952. After some negotiations the girl finally gets a tape and necessary equipment. Private 'investigation' begins, aiming at determining the causes of the success and fall of Birkut. While learning the history of his dramatic life, Agnieszka finds out and discloses the bitter truth about the 1950s – the period of Stalinism in Poland. The film was internationally well noted, earning awards such as: Cannes International Film Festival – FIPRESCI award (1978), Brussels Film Festival – the Actors Award Crystal Star (Jerzy Radziwiłowicz), (1979), FEST International Film Festival in Belgrade– Grand Prize (1979),