Communist Poland made a spy thriller about hunting resistance fighters — and accidentally made the villains sympathetic.
Jaruga, the chief of the local branch of Security Office leads a fight against a Home Army unit led by a man known as Boruta and begins to suspect that one of his men was planted by the insurgents. Another Security Office agent arrives to uncover the conspiracy and deal the final blow to Boruta.
Direction
Passendorfer's tight, paranoid framing.
Acting
Hübner's ice-cold bureaucratic menace.
Writing
Script that undermines its own propaganda.
Director
Jerzy Passendorfer
Ewa Krzyżewska
Anastazja
Witold Pyrkosz
Major Jan Skrzypczak "Boruta"
Tadeusz Schmidt
Captain Jaruga
Marian Kociniak
Lieutenant Krysiak
Jolanta Bohdal
Krystyna, Ramuz's daughter
Krystyna Borowicz
Major Raczyńska
Janusz Bukowski
"Bear"
Aleksander Fogiel
Professor Ramuz
Janusz Kłosiński
Sadowski, Party Secretary
Wacław Kowalski
Sowa
Marian Łącz
Porter
Adam Mularczyk
Lieutenant Mikołaj Lewicki
Wojciech Pokora
"Spider"
Michał Szewczyk
Home Army Soldier
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Made during Poland's ' thaw' period, the film had to condemn anti-communist fighters while making them charismatic — a tension that broke through.
Passendorfer was a Party member who specialized in 'patriotic' films; critics now read this as his most accidentally subversive work.
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