A biology professor, Adam enters a hospital for observation. He is a loner and a serious-minded man, who dislikes any display of emotions. He spends three months in the hospital while being tested. After observing patients and hospital routines around him from a distance, he learns that he will need a kidney transplant. Meanwhile his personal and professional life is falling apart: he refuses his wife's offer to donate the kidney for him; the scientific problem he was working on has been solved elsewhere. In the end Adam cracks under the prolonged pressure, waiting for the sound of an ambulance bringing a moribund patient whose kidney may be used for the transplant.

A woman just out of prison gets a job in a nursing home and tries, unsuccessfully, to put her life back together.

A popularity-hungry young journalist writes a sensationalist article on a supposed teen suicide club.

Romek is a boy whom nobody wants and who cannot find love in anyone. His mother has no interest in him at all. The boy gets under the influence of enterprising Janusz. This one teaches him to steal. During the first attempt, he is caught and puts in a juvenile court. The mother decides to take the opportunity to put him in an orphanage.

Film opens with the mad rush of haphazard freedom as the concentration camps are liberated. Men are trying to grab food, change clothes, bury their tormentors they find alive. Then they are herded into other camps as the Allies try to devise policy to control the situation. A young poet who cannot quite find himself in this new situation, meets a headstrong Jewish young girl who wants him to run off with her, to the West. He cannot cope with her growing demands for affection, while still harboring the hatred for the Germans and disdain for his fellow men who quickly revert to petty enmities.

A potter putting up a fireplace tells a story of a man, who decided to build a house at an infamous fire site.

Girls no more, four heroines emerge into womanhood with a more clear-eyed outlook on life.

A university professor leads a lonely and sad life as a retiree. He often goes for walks in the cemetery. One day, he meets Ania there, the daughter of his friend Andrzej, who died tragically in the mountains. The girl lives with her children in a student dormitory, living a very modest life. Her husband left a few years ago to work abroad. Ania stayed in the country to finish her studies. Meeting the girl radically changes the professor's barren existence. Despite his advanced age and lack of experience, he takes on the care of the children to enable Ania to go to England for a management course.

Mirek Kubiak is a primary school student. Like his friends, he is fascinated by Indians and would like to become a brave Apache. Uncle Eligiusz from America comes to his house. The boy becomes embroiled in a criminal scandal.

The young and beautiful wife of a prominent diplomat complains of boredom. To change her monotonous life, she has an affair, through which she gets entangled in intrigues and espionage affairs.