Zdzisław Szymański
Known For & Full Filmography49 Titles
Drama Series - 1980, 16 episodes • as chłop na Żeraniu
The story of the residents of a tenement house on Złota Street in Warsaw from 1945 to 1980.
Drama Series - 1968, 16 episodes • as kolejarz, łącznik Klossa
A series about the adventures of a Polish secret agent, Hans Kloss, who acts as a double agent in the Abwehr during Second World War in occupied Poland.
Drama Series - 1976, 16 episodes • as Peasant in Makac
The series centres around the investigations of Police Lieutenant Sławomir Borewicz. Each episode features a different case being solved by Borewicz.
Drama Series - 1976, 16 episodes • as Kałacki, pracownik „Elbawu”
The series centres around the investigations of Police Lieutenant Sławomir Borewicz. Each episode features a different case being solved by Borewicz.
Drama Series - 1977, 16 episodes • as chłop chcący wykonać wyrok na Zygadlewiczach
An epic, multi-threaded story about the fate of Poles during World War II. "Czas pogardy" was shown primarily from the perspective of two main characters - Lieutenant Władysław Niwiński and Leon Kuraś - a petty crook, but not without heroic traits. The authors of the series sought to show, in particular, everyday life under Nazi occupation in Poland.
Drama Series - 1986, 16 episodes • Main Cast Role
An outstanding performance featuring brilliant storytelling, high stakes drama, and unforgettable character arcs.
Movie - 1966, 2h 15m • as Guard (uncredited)
A young poet is hired to boost the morale of water pump workers.
Drama Series - 1975, 16 episodes • as Wicek Rogalski
1957. Excessively high production standards imposed by the authorities result in the plan not being fulfilled, and the workers cannot imagine living normally without rewards and bonuses. A rebellion breaks out. Worker democracy wins – the working class elects a director from among its own ranks. He is an old locksmith with no managerial experience. Although he believes in the socialist spirit and has a communist past, he does not hold the position for long, as he makes promises too easily that he is unable to keep.
Movie - 1981, 2h 15m • Main Cast Role
A young architect is locked up in prison. He recalls his uncompromising youth and gradual sliding into the moral swamp of compromises. He was not alone. A group of his friends, dreamers and glass house builders, accompanied him.
Movie - 1977, 2h 15m • as Starszy przodownik Luchowski, komendant posterunku w Żęsnej
In 1931, just before the New Year, in a house of architect Henryk Zaremba scream rips the night. The daughter of Zaremba is found killed in her bedroom, obviously killed with a pickaxe. The police arrives and starts the investigation. Rita Gorgonova, the governess of the girl and also lover of Zaremba becomes the main suspect.
Movie - 1972, 2h 15m • as Porter (uncredited)
A young man strikes up an ill-fated romance with a married woman.
Movie - 1969, 2h 15m • as Soldier
A staging of William Shakespeare's tragedy, directed in 1969 by Andrzej Wajda. The roles of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are played by Tadeusz Łomnicki and Magda Zawadzka - actors who at that time gained popularity in the series "Pan Wołodyjowski". This perverse use of the artists' images by the director was intended to serve an interpretation of the tragedy that emphasizes Shakespeare's question: where does evil in man come from?
Drama Series - 1977, 16 episodes • as majster Kazimierz Krajewski, ojciec Barbary
Engineer Bogdan Zawada moves to the construction of a port on the Baltic Sea. The man tries to arrange his personal and professional life in a new environment.
Movie - 1977, 2h 15m • Main Cast Role
In Nazi-occupied Warsaw, teenage scouts Alek, Rudy, and Zośka risk their lives pulling down a swastika and hoisting the Polish flag atop the German “Zachęta” cultural center and then blowing up a mobile propaganda cinema.
Drama Series - 1972, 16 episodes • as strażnik w muzeum zamku w Malborku
Pan Tomasz with his friends are looking a big treasure hidden by knights.
Movie - 1971, 2h 15m • as Bank Guard (uncredited)
An acute case of Mondayitis in Warsaw. Interwoven stories of a few inhabitants of Warsaw, including one very unlucky Italian on a governmental mission and a charitable Polish American.
Movie - 1962, 2h 15m • Main Cast Role
The fate of a working-class family during the third Silesian Uprising.
Movie - 1965, 2h 15m • as Szymon
After a disaster in the mine, Łopot, a technician, protects the perpetrator. He soon faces a moral dilemma.
Movie - 1974, 2h 15m • as Train Passenger (uncredited)
Accomplished playwright supervises the stage rehearsals for his new play away from home. He rents a room at a private house, which is owned by mother and daughter. Wiktor gets entangled in the two women's bizarre relationship.
Movie - 1964, 2h 15m • as "Mruk"
While hiding from the Germans in the forest, young Polish corporal tries hard to fulfill his order to take care of a wounded lieutenant and wait for the doctor and transportation to come.
Movie - 1963, 2h 15m • as Soldier
After WWII a soldier returns to his Polish homeland from Scotland.
Movie - 1978, 2h 15m • Main Cast Role
The last days in the life of Edward Dembowski (1822-1846), the organizer of the Kraków Uprising in 1846. The informal leader of the uprising, determined to fight for the unification of Polish lands and the liberation of the peasants, negotiates with other politicians.
Movie - 1964, 2h 15m • as Prisoner
Freed Polish soldiers are trapped in a small town in Germany during the last days of World War II. After a doctor's daughter is raped by a concentration camp worker, the Poles allow her and her father to stay in the house that is their temporary quarters. While waiting to be repatriated, the war-weary group is forced to fight some German soldiers who invade the town. The war brings out conflicting emotions of the Poles who find themselves trapped in the house and once again under fire from the enemy.
Movie - 1975, 2h 15m • Main Cast Role
Two years after the war, during a train trip, Henryk (20) recollects the occupation period. He passes different train stations and recollects various situations from the past: his family life, working in a garage, guerrilla warfare, the fear that accompanied him every day. He’s looking at the travellers’ faces, including the ones who have survived the war.
Movie - 1956, 2h 15m • as Drunk Restaurant Patron (uncredited)
Nikodem Dyzma is a poor dancer who comes to Warsaw to find a job. The problem is that nobody wants to hire him. One day he finds an invitation to the party with very important people and decides to attend. A small accident at the party makes him the hero of the night and becomes the beginning of his career.
Movie - 1967, 2h 15m • as Sgt. Michał Gawlicki
Westerplatte is a small peninsula at the entry to the Gdańsk Harbour. Before World War II, it functioned as a Polish ammunition depot in the Free City of Danzig. Its crew consisted of one infantry company and a group of civilians, 182 people in total. It was the only Polish guard-post at the mouth of the Vistula River, with as little as five sentries, one field cannon, two anti-armour guns and four mortars. The first shots of World War II were fired there. This film tells the story of Westerplatte's courageous defenders.
Movie - 1980, 2h 15m • Main Cast Role
A Soviet tank breaks through the front line during the January 1945 offensive.
Movie - 1987, 2h 15m • as dozorca
In difficult times of political and social change, a mother raises four sons alone.
Movie - 1964, 2h 15m • as NSZ Soldier (uncredited)
Świętokrzyskie Mountains, 1944. A People's Army unit receives orders to transport a party delegate outside the front line, while heavy fighting is going on between the Germans and resistance fighters in the region.
Movie - 1979, 2h 15m • as Patient
The beginning of the occupation. A closed mental world for the sick. Dr. Kauters values only methods of resolution, Dr. Rygier is a believer in strong authority, Dr. Marglewski considers psychic property a form of haunting, Dr. Nosilewska left Austria after the Nazi occupation. The writer Sekułowski seeks shelter. The young, newly arrived doctor, Stefan, refuses to remain passive in the face of the situation and events...
Movie - 1978, 2h 15m • as Apartment Supervisor
Tadeusz Krzakoski, the director of a failing state-owned company, is married with problems. His mistress, the daughter of a Communist party bigwig, says she's pregnant and Tadeusz knows he'll have to marry her to save his reputation and his job. But divorce is never simple and Bareja's screwball comedies are never boring.
Movie - 1978, 2h 15m • as Drunkard (uncredited)
In 1920s Poland, a police commissioner leads the investigation into a series of brutal murders of young boys as the case grows increasingly unsettling and personal.
Movie - 1947, 2h 15m • as Roman's Friend (uncredited)
Set during the German occupation of Warsaw during WWII, this musical tells the story of several inhabitants of the same tenement house.
Movie - 1975, 2h 15m • as Peasant
A family saga of Barbara Ostrzeńska-Niechcic and Bogumił Niechcic against the backdrop of the January Uprising of 1863 and World War I. The film is a rather straightforward and faithful adaptation of a novel by Maria Dabrowska with the same title. The plot is woven around the changing fortunes of a noble (upper-class) Niechcic family in the pre-WWI Poland. There are two main crossing threads: a social history one and an existential one.
Movie - 1973, 2h 15m • as Manhole Worker
Stanisław Maria Rochowicz, a bumbling art historian, is falsely accused of stealing a painting. The alleged thief faces five years in prison. Desperate, he decides to hide in disguise as a woman until he can paint a copy of the stolen canvas. Lacking means to live, he takes jobs as a maid for a variety of colorful characters.
Movie - 1979, 2h 15m • as Stasiek
Psychological drama; a retired sailor, after 40 years of absence, returns to his native village to spend the rest of his life there. After forty years of work at sea, Petty Officer Ignacy Krzeminski returns to his home village in the Suwałki region. The meeting with his former beloved, now a widow with four children, ends in a fiasco, nothing connects them anymore. Also coming into contact with relatives and former acquaintances make Ignacy realize that he is a stranger here.
Movie - 1951, 2h 15m • as Reporter
Polish composer Stanisław Moniuszko fights for the right to stage his opera "Halka".
Movie - 1972, 2h 15m • as Prison Guard (uncredited)
Jerzy Szajnowicz-Ivanov, the son of a Polish mother and a Russian father, raised in Greece, reports to the Carpathian Brigade in the spring of 1941. While the Poles are wary of him at first, he proves his worth by taking part in several sabotage actions against the Nazis.
Movie - 1968, 2h 15m • as Policeman (uncredited)
A war drama showing the functioning of Hitler’s “racial purity” law, forbidding foreign workers from any contact with Germany. Foreigners on forced labor in Nazi Germany.
Movie - 1956, 2h 15m • as Peasant
A man has been found dead after having been hurled from a train. As security agents, police and a medical examiner piece together his identity, three accounts emerge: one set during World War II, one in the immediate aftermath of the war, and one in contemporary Poland.
Movie - 1982, 2h 15m • as Łazarski
A portrait of a small, contemporary village, shaken by the return of one of its residents from prison. Zdzich returns from prison to a small village on the edge of the Augustów Primeval Forest. He was accused of shooting a militiaman and, despite the clear bias of the witnesses, he was convicted. Now the locals fear that his return will bring revenge for the false accusations. Zdzich hides in the forest. One day, he meets Romanek, the son of Jadźka, whose honor he once defended in a fight with others. Romanek cannot answer who his father is. Their meetings become more frequent and turn into friendship. Zdzich decides to come out of hiding and makes a show of attending church. He proposes to Jadźka and is accepted. He also explains the circumstances of his arrest to the locals. The next day, the forester is killed by a mysterious bullet. Zdzich was the last person seen with him. This causes unrest in the village.
Movie - 1979, 2h 15m • as dozorca parkingu
A moral action drama showing a crisis and breakup of a married couple from the perspective of the both spouses, Roman and Magda. Through flashbacks the film reveals a shocking study of the disintegration of the relationship between two adult people and their gradual dehumanization.
Movie - 1962, 2h 15m • as Jarząbek
Two men working as lawn mowers fight over a woman.
Movie - 1975, 2h 15m • as Lipka
After getting a university degree, Marek Grzyb comes back to his village and does his best to convince the people to modernize.
Movie - 1957, 2h 15m • as Cześnik's Courtier
Two noblemen live in one castle, which they both own half of. After a wall dividing both halves of the castle gets damaged they start an intense rivalry.
Movie - 1956, 2h 15m • as Jędrzej Krupa
Podhale, 17th century – the story of an anti-nobility peasant rebellion led by Aleksander Kostka Napierski.
Movie - 2025, 2h 15m • Main Cast Role
A young journalist from Warsaw goes to a small town of Kamienica to prepare a report on a motorcycle gang.
Movie - 1981, 2h 15m • as Nowak
A group of Polish boys is opposed to a German teacher who aims to Germanise the young men.
Movie - 1963, 2h 15m • as Rudy (uncredited)
A small fishing village between the sea and the lake. One day, when all the men went out to catch, a viper bitten Grandpa Filip and little Madzia was severely injured by a misfire. Holidaymakers with a motorboat refuse to help. Filip decides to take the girl to the doctor himself.