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An impoverished widowed mother expecting her fourth child deals with nearly 25 years of political oppression in this stark drama. Lucja Krol (Magda Teresa Wojcik) is befriended by her neighbor, but the communist scholar is soon arrested and jailed. She survives the Depression of the 1930s and narrowly escapes being arrested by Nazis during World War II. Her former neighbor Wiktor becomes a high-ranking official after his arrest but is disgraced when he campaigns for the release of Lucja's son Klemens (Bougslaw Linda) after he too is arrested. Klemens is tortured into a bogus confession and dies at the hands of his captors, who never tell Lucja about the fate of her son. This 1982 film was shelved until 1987 when censorship restrictions became more relaxed in communist Poland.