The film is about a group of old retired theatre actors in a retirement home for actors who aim to regroup and stage Goethe's Faust.

A grotesque story, based on Michal Choromanski's novel, about a polluted area where gas leaking from a swamp causes noses to drop off.

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 balks. Only slightly nonplused, the groom's father, a status-seeking doctor, decides to go ahead with the expensive reception anyway. Polish director Krzysz Zanussi uses this scenario to stick it to capitalist corruption, and to society's destruction of the individual spirit. Leslie Caron, the one recognizable member of the cast, is outstanding as a wealthy, over-the-hill ballerina who happens to be a kleptomaniac.

Engineer Andrzej Uriaszewicz returns to Poland in order to smuggle a valuable painting out of the country.

Polish composer Stanisław Moniuszko fights for the right to stage his opera "Halka".