Colonel Kwiatkowski

A garrison surgeon named Andrzej Kwiatkowski is stationed in a military hospital in the Western Territories. After he successfully operates on a feared UB colonel, he snags a week of leave and, on a whim with a friend, hops into a requisitioned truck bound for Warsaw. The city is half-ruined but alive with people trying to rebuild. There he runs into Krysia, a woman who lived near him before the war, and an immediate attraction sparks. At a dance in the battered Polonia hotel a confrontation with a Russian officer escalates, and to defuse the mess Kwiatkowski claims to be a senior UB colonel, improvising status and authority to protect his pride and his budding romance.

The film was released in 1996, directed by Kazimierz Kutz with story credit to Jerzy Stefan Stawiński. It stars Marek Kondrat as Kwiatkowski, with Zbigniew Zamachowski, Renata Dancewicz, Adam Ferency and Artur Barciś rounding out the main cast, situating a personal farce inside a politically charged postwar setting.

No reliable box office totals are widely reported for this title, and it did not register significant international commercial impact, remaining primarily of interest to Polish audiences and festival programmers rather than a mainstream global release.

Among Polish postwar comedies it is remembered for mixing dry humor with historical awkwardness, showing how authority and survival often collide in absurd ways. Kondrat's performance and the film's setting in ruined Warsaw keep it in discussions of how cinema depicts the immediate aftermath of conflict without sentimentalizing the past.

Critical reaction was mixed to warm, reflected in modest audience ratings like a 6.7/10 average; reviewers tended to praise the acting and the sly satirical touches while noting the film's uneven tone at times. Major themes include identity performed as power, the improvisations people use to endure chaos, and the thin line between courage and pretense.