Known for Acting
It is a bitter story about a middle-aged man, who hates his life and other people, including himself. Adam Miauczynski, the character known from director Marek Koterski's previous films, is a 44 year-old teacher, who reads poetry during school lessons and later goes home swearing and calling his neighbours' names. The worst pain for him is the next 5 minutes of living. He doesn't accept himself and even everyday contacts with others cause his aggression. Though constantly dreaming of a romantic love, he is not bold enough to make his dreams come true. The desperate Miauczynski personalizes our own fears and obsessions, which have become so visible recently.
The teenage siblings know that no one will give them a life more interesting than vegetating in a gloomy hole. They take matters into their own hands and organize a bank robbery, because money is their ticket to a better world. Everything was supposed to go smoothly, but then that fatal bad luck struck... Cop 1 isn't so bad: he keeps his wife in line because he loves her, he drinks because he's lost, he takes bribes because he needs money for booze. Cop 2 isn't bad either, he just supports Cop 1, who's in trouble, spiritually. Soon, the paths of the cops and thieves will cross...
Boris, a teenager, is arrested by the police. As part of the cooperation, he agrees to infiltrate the gang.
One day, hospital orderlies, watching corpse in the morgue, recognize film director. Man, even though he died, he begins to remember his life. He made a career making movies, had numerous mistresses, but never realized their dreams. His life was interspersed with many setbacks that enfeebled him from the inside. Although he made a career in film, he was not happy with his life.
A town near Warsaw. A group of teenagers rules one of the courtyards: Ali, Pawik, and Małgośka, the object of both boys' fascination. A few years later, these same young people form a typical youth gang. Ali and Pawik gather around them a group of peers who have been unable to find their place in society and want to live an easy life. Robberies and thefts are their idea of a comfortable existence. A few more years pass and the gang transforms into a mafia. After the 1989 elections, it enters into deals with politicians. It also gets into a conflict with Russian gangsters.
Berlin, 1990. At the invitation of his actor friends, who have already lived abroad for many years, Max, a Polish theater director, comes to Berlin. They begin to work together. They try to realize their dream: to stage a play, the staging of which was prevented by the imposition of martial law ten years earlier. The way they raise funds (selling pieces of the "historic" wall) and struggle against the heartless machinery of bureaucracy forms the axis of the film. In their efforts, the four protagonists are assisted by Regina, a translator familiar with local customs and practices. The film deals with the problems of artists in the new, commercializing reality. It is the story of strangers, auslanders who want to realize their dreams and ambitions outside their homeland. It raises topical issues of chauvinism, xenophobia and hatred of foreigners felt by both Germans and Poles.
