The Third Part of the NightMovies like The Third Part of the Night
- Key Features:
- World War II, Nazi occupation, Surrealism, Doppelganger, Loss, Identity crisis, Existentialism, Trauma, Grief, Paranoia, Psychological horror, Poland
- Tone:
- serious, surreal, poetic
- Target Audience:
- Art house film enthusiasts, Fans of surreal cinema, Viewers interested in historical dramas, Those who appreciate psychological thrillers
- Emotional Arc:
- Trauma → Disorientation → Despair
The Third Part of the Night

Set during the Nazi occupation of Poland, the story follows Michał, who witnesses the murder of his mother, wife and child and then is hurled into a life that literally is not his own; a surreal world littered with trapdoors, doppelgängers and wormholes.
The Third Part of the Night
It’s Christmas Eve, and Ewa has plotted to pass the hours until morning with her former lover Janusz, a family man, by making him believe her husband has gone missing. During this night of recklessness and lies, the pair grapple with choices made when their affair was discovered three years ago, and with the value of their present lives.

A young woman left her family for an unspecified reason. The husband determines to find out the truth and starts following his wife. At first, he suspects that a man is involved. But gradually, he finds out more and more strange behaviors and bizarre incidents that indicate something more than a possessed love affair.

Polish immigrant Karol Karol finds himself out of a marriage, a job and a country when his French wife, Dominique, divorces him after six months due to his impotence. Forced to leave France after losing the business they jointly owned, Karol enlists fellow Polish expatriate Mikołaj to smuggle him back to their homeland.

Summer of 1939. Zosia is a young Polish girl who is deeply in love with Ukrainian Petro. Their great love will be put to the test when her father decides to marry her to a wealthy widower Skiba. Right after wedding she is left alone because her husband is drafted to the Polish army for the war with Germany. Meanwhile, tensions grow due to Jews, Poles, and Ukrainians living side by side.

A bridegroom is possessed by an unquiet spirit in the midst of his own wedding celebration, in this clever take on the Jewish legend of the dybbuk.

As a high school student, Majka bore a child, Ania, whom Majka’s mother, Ewa, has been raising as her own. Now that Majka is ready for motherhood, Ewa refuses to let go, leading Majka to kidnap her own daughter, with unexpected emotional consequences.

City of Warsaw, Poland, August 1st, 1944. Citizens have experienced inhuman acts of terror and violence during five long years of Nazi occupation. As the Soviet Army relentlessly approaches, the youngest and bravest among them rise up as one and face tyranny fighting street by street, but the price to pay will be high and hard the way to freedom…

Young Polish nobleman Jakub is saved from imprisonment by a stranger. In return, the stranger wants to obtain a list of Jakub’s fellow conspirators. As he follows his mysterious savior across the country, Jakub is affected by the overall chaos and moral corruption; he goes insane and becomes a mass murderer.

In Stalinist Poland, cabaret singer Tonia decides to spend the evening drinking with a group of friends. The next morning, she awakes to find that, for reasons unknown to her, she has been jailed as a political prisoner. As prison officials interrogate, torture and humiliate her, she fights for survival and to maintain her innocence by refusing to sign a false confession. As her years of imprisonment pass, her relationship with her captors grows more complicated.

A man and a woman meet in the ruins of post-war Poland. With vastly different backgrounds and temperaments, they are fatally mismatched and yet drawn to each other.

Having spent years in prison, Franz Maurer is released and goes out into a new Poland, where nothing is as he remembered it to be. Who and what is waiting for the man who, for the last 25 years... hasn’t been doing anything? How will he find himself in a world where old principles and loyalty have ceased to exist? We will get to know that when fate reunites Franz and “Nowy”. Their meeting will change everything.

19-year-old Tomek whiles away his lonely life by spying on his opposite neighbour Magda through binoculars. She's an artist in her mid-thirties, and appears to have everything - not least a constant stream of men at her beck and call. But when the two finally meet, they discover that they have a lot more in common than appeared at first sight...

A busy attorney, worried that his anorexic daughter Olga, who is still grieving her recently deceased mother, might try to harm herself, sends her to see a psychiatrist who's dealing with her own loss in an unusual way.

1982, Poland. A translator loses her husband and becomes a victim of her own sorrow. She looks to sex, to her son, to law, and to hypnotism when she has nothing else in this time of martial law when Solidarity was banned.

Jacek climbs into the taxi driven by Waldemar, tells him to drive to a remote location, then brutally strangles him, seemingly without motive.

A German woman on a ship returning to Europe notices a face of another woman which brings recollections from the past. She tells her husband that she had been an overseer in Auschwitz during the war, but she has actually saved a woman's life.

Stach is a wayward teen living in squalor on the outskirts of Nazi-occupied Warsaw. Guided by an avuncular Communist organizer, he is introduced to the underground resistance—and to the beautiful Dorota. Soon he is engaged in dangerous efforts to fight oppression and indignity, maturing as he assumes responsibility for others’ lives. A coming-of-age story of survival and shattering loss, A Generation delivers a brutal portrait of the human cost of war.

A father and daughter, Michał and Anka, have a unique intimacy, which the college-aged Anka is beginning to feel conflicted about. When she finds an unopened letter from her deceased mother, it seems to justify her attraction to Michał, who may not in fact be her father.

Josef visits a dilapidated Sanatorium to see his father. Josef undertakes a strange journey through the many rooms of the sanatorium, each which conjures worlds composed of his memories, dreams and nightmares.

In the early days of Nazi Germany, a powerful noble family must adjust to life under the new dictatorship regime.

Ana is confronted with body and desire at three key moments of her life. As a young girl, she brings her dead grandpa back to life. In her puberty, she discovers the power of decay and sexuality. Finally, she wrestles with loss and loneliness when she returns to her parental home, now derelict.

Two brothers are trying to find out the truth from years ago. The whole town is against them.

Paris, France, 1942, during the Nazi occupation. Robert Klein, a successful art dealer who benefits from the misfortunes of those who are ruthlessly persecuted, discovers by chance that there is another Robert Klein, apparently a Jewish man; someone with whom he could be mistakenly identified, something dangerous in such harsh times.

This harrowing tale of survival centers on Rose, a Masurian woman, whose German soldier husband was killed in the war, leaving her alone on their farm. A single woman had no defense against Russian soldiers who raped as a form of revenge, nor against plundering Poles who found themselves in desperate straits. Help arrives for Rose in the form of Tadeusz, a former officer in the Polish Home Army who deserted after he saw his wife raped and murdered by Russian troops and is attempting to hide his identity.

In a monastery cut off from the world, the monks run a clinic for the possessed. One day, a young policeman Marek comes to the convent. Posing as a clergyman, he penetrates monastic life and tries to explain the recent, mysterious disappearance of several tormented inmates. It turns out, however, that there is no way out of the monastery.

In an attempt to flee Nazi-occupied France, Georg assumes the identity of a dead author but soon finds himself stuck in Marseilles, where he falls in love with Maria, a young woman searching for her missing husband.

Adam unexpectedly visits his family house at Christmas after a few years of working abroad. No family member knows about his secret plans and the real reasons of his visit.

Roman and Hanka have a loving marriage, but his impotence has led to her having an affair. The unbearable situation drives Roman to extreme measures both physically and mentally, testing their love and his own will to live.

Cecilia and her son embark on a journey. On the third day, she is found wandering alone, not remembering what happened during this time. She is desperately looking for her son and finds herself wrapped in a brutal hunt, carried out by a religious fanatic, whom she faces off against. To her, he's a lunatic. To him, Cecilia is the enemy.

The commandant of Auschwitz, Rudolf Höss, and his wife Hedwig, strive to build a dream life for their family in a house and garden next to the camp.

Peasant girl Jagna is forced to marry the much older, wealthy farmer Boryna, despite her love for his son Antek. With time, Jagna becomes the object of envy and disdain with the villagers and she must fight to preserve her independence.

Spain, 1982. Andrés Expósito, a young police inspector, accepts a posting in Denia, a small town on the Mediterranean coast, in the hope of leading a quieter life and that the natural environment will help improve the fragile health of his daughter; but once in his new post he becomes involved by chance in the investigation of the strange death of the inspector he has come to replace.

Summer of 1945. A temporary orphanage is established in an abandoned palace surrounded by forests for the eight children liberated from the Gross-Rosen camp. Hanka, also a former inmate, becomes their guardian. After the atrocities of the camp, the protagonists slowly begin to regain what is left of their childhood but the horror returns quickly. Camp Alsatians roam the forests around. Released by the SS earlier on, they have gone feral and are starving. Looking for food they besiege the palace. The children are terrified and their camp survival instinct is triggered.

Pernat finds himself in a police interrogation, accused of a murder, and unable to recall any details of the crime, or even his own life. He's released back into a world of raving lunatics and deranged dentists, murderous doctors and scientists who believe the secret of human creation is inside the walls of a cast-iron oven.

A story about Janina Duszejko, an elderly woman, who lives alone in the Klodzko Valley where a series of mysterious crimes are committed. Duszejko is convinced that she knows who (or what) is the murderer, but nobody believes her.

Two strangers, Jerzy and Marta, accidentally end up holding tickets for the same sleeping chamber on an overnight train to the Baltic Sea coast. Also on board is Marta's spurned lover, who will not leave her alone. When the police enter the train in search of a murderer on the lam, rumors fly and everything seems to point toward one of the main characters as the culprit.

In 1945, as Stalin sets his hands over Poland, famous painter Wladislaw Strzeminski refuses to compromise on his art with the doctrines of social realism. Persecuted, expelled from his chair at the University, he's eventually erased from the museums' walls. With the help of some of his students, he starts fighting against the Party and becomes the symbol of an artistic resistance against intellectual tyranny.

Horror anthology consisting of three episodes directed by Jörg Buttgereit, Andreas Marschall and Michal Kosakowski.

Poland, 1978. Edward Srodon, a zootechnician, makes an accidental stop at the Dziabas family farm, located in the remote area of the Bieszczady Mountains. Years later, on a winter day during Martial Law, a People's Militia investigation team examines a crime scene.

In Argentina, one daughter of patriarch Madariaga is married to a Frenchman while the other is married to a German thus leading to a crisis when Nazi Germany occupies France and some Madariaga family members fight on opposite sides.

On September 1st, 1939, Nazi Germany invades Poland, unleashing World War II. On September 17th, the Soviet Red Army crosses the border. The Polish army, unable to fight on two fronts, is defeated. Thousands of Polish men, both military and government officials, are captured by the invaders. Their fate will only be known several years later.

Zofia, a professor of ethics, is visited by Elżbieta, an American researching the fate of Jews who survived World War II. A daytime classroom conversation turns into a night of confrontation, and Zofia is forced to answer for a decision she made decades ago that directly affected the course of Elżbieta’s life.

A concentration camp survivor discovers her former torturer and lover working as a porter at a hotel in postwar Vienna. When the couple attempt to re-create their sadomasochistic relationship, his former SS comrades begin to stalk them.

Though no one can see him, Hollow Face lurks in the corners, desperately desiring love but only knowing how to spread fear and hate. He creeps into the life of John Farrow after Farrow’s beloved 13-year-old daughter Mia is assaulted in their home. The line between the real and the imaginary blurs as fissures start to open within the family unit. It seems that no security measure can keep Hollow Face out.

Tadek, a Polish detective, becomes suspicious of a controversial author when the incidents described in his unpublished novel resemble the inner workings of an unsolved murder.

Anthropology professor Michal develops two overwhelming obsessions. The first one is a mummified, 3,000 year-old, perfectly preserved body of a shaman he and his colleagues have recently dragged out of a swamp. The second is an enigmatic student he meets by chance at a railway station.

A post mortem photographer and a little girl confront ghosts in a haunted village after the First World War.

Dorota Geller, a married woman, faces a dilemma involving her sick husband's prognosis. Her husband's doctor, who believes in God, sweared about it in vain.

Hanna and Simon are in a 20 year marriage with an unexciting relationship. By chance, they both meet and start separate affairs with Adam. Adam has no idea that his two lovers are married, until they are all found out when Hanna becomes pregnant, with the natural doubts stemming from their situation.

Germany, 1945. Soldier Willi Herold, a deserter of the German army, stumbles into a uniform of Nazi captain abandoned during the last and desperate weeks of the Third Reich. Newly emboldened by the allure of a suit that he has stolen only to stay warm, Willi discovers that many Germans will follow the leader, whoever he is.

After meeting in a chat room, Fede (22) arrives at a downtown building to have an intimate encounter with a gay couple older than him. As the night unfolds, Fede has an intense and telling experience. The next morning finds him different, as if suddenly he had found a new possible way to love.

A dramatization of one man's rescue of Jewish refugees in the Nazi-occupied Polish city of Lvov. In Darkness tells the true story of Leopold Soha who risks his own life to save a dozen people from certain death. Initially only interested in his own good, the thief and burglar hides Jewish refugees for 14 months in the sewers of the Nazi-occupied town of Lvov (formerly Poland).

The fate of three Catholic priests were linked together through tragic events a few years back. Every year, on the anniversary of the catastrophe, they gather to celebrate their survival of the tragedy. Lisowski works at a curia in a big city, building his career while dreaming of the Vatican. Standing in his way, Mordowicz, the archbishop, a luxurious church dignitary who is making use of his political connections to build the largest sanctuary in Poland. Trybus, is a parish priest and often submits to human weaknesses. Kukuła also is not doing well. Despite his passion for faith, he is losing the trust of his flock. Soon, through new tragic events, the paths of the three priests will cross again.

Łukasz, an unemployed geography graduate, is wrongfully arrested for robbery. His alibi is weak, and he is identified during a lineup. The situation gets hopeless when, a few hours later, the alleged victim suddenly dies. The defense lawyer promises to do everything in his power, but Łukasz ends up in custody. He must find his place in a world of harsh prison rules. He chooses the cell of the “grypsujący” (inmates who communicate by coded messages)…

Centered around a group of individuals, who come to experience magical moments over the course of one day. Full of the power of family, love and the spirit of forgiveness. Each individual comes to realize that Christmas, more than any other time of the year, is full of wonder and surprises.

When her little sister claims she sees the dead, Alia consults a psychic, who opens her own eyes to the vengeful ghosts haunting their childhood home.

Western frontiers of the USSR, 1942. The region is under German occupation. A man is wrongly accused of collaboration. Desperate to save his dignity, he faces an impossible moral choice.

A killer is released from prison and breaks into a remote home to kill a woman, her handicapped son and her pretty daughter.

A teenage postal worker, Tomek, routinely spies on his older neighbor Magda, a sexually liberated artist who lives in the apartment across the courtyard from his. As their private worlds merge, fascination turns to obsession, and the line between love and curiosity becomes violently blurred.

A German intelligence officer investigates a prostitute's killing in Warsaw during World War II. He lands on three major Nazi generals as suspects, two of whom are also involved in a plot to kill Adolf Hitler.

Michaela, an epileptic, enrolls in college to study education. She goes off her medication and soon begins hearing voices and seeing apparitions that tell her to avoid religious objects, although she is devoutly Roman Catholic. One priest scoffs at the idea that Michaela could be possessed by demons, but a younger pastor arranges an exorcism for the young woman.

Reeling from the unexpected death of her husband, Beth is left alone in the lakeside home he built for her. Soon she begins to uncover her recently deceased husband's disturbing secrets.

A human body gradually reconstructs itself as its various component parts crowd themselves into a small room and eventually, after much experimentation, sort out which part goes where.

In the aftermath of World War II, a British colonel and his wife are assigned to live in Hamburg during the post-war reconstruction, but tensions arise with the German widower who lives with them.

Romance brings two warring families together in this historical drama. As citizens fight for independence in 1810s Lithuania, Tadeusz, the son of a murderer, and Zosia, a young woman, come together for a wedding against a backdrop of changing politics, ancient traditions, and the uncertain future of a country.

The wife of a famous composer survives a car accident that kills her husband and daughter. Now alone, she shakes off her old identity and explores her newfound freedom but finds that she is unbreakably bound to other humans, including her husband’s mistress, whose existence she never suspected.

Filip buys an 8mm movie camera when his first child is born. Because it's the first camera in town, he's named official photographer by the local Party boss. His horizons widen when he is sent to regional film festivals with his first works but his focus on movie making also leads to domestic strife and philosophical dilemmas.

One day, hospital orderlies, watching corpse in the morgue, recognize film director. Man, even though he died, he begins to remember his life. He made a career making movies, had numerous mistresses, but never realized their dreams. His life was interspersed with many setbacks that enfeebled him from the inside. Although he made a career in film, he was not happy with his life.

After the Japanese defeat to the Russians, Kaji leads the last remaining men through Manchuria. Intent on returning to his dear wife and his old life, Kaji faces great odds in a variety of different harrowing circumstances as he and his fellow men sneak behind enemy lines.

Witek runs after a train. Three variations follow on how such a seemingly banal incident could influence the rest of Witek's life.

While vacationing on a remote German island with his younger pregnant wife, an artist has an emotional breakdown while confronting his repressed desires.

Beksiński is a gentle man with arachnophobia, despite his hardcore sexual fantasies and his fondness for painting disturbing dystopian works. Beksiński is a family man who wants only the best for his loving wife Zofia, neurotic son Tomasz and the couple's aging mothers. His daily painting to classical music eventually pays off and he makes a name for himself in contemporary art. Good Catholic woman Zofia tries to hold the family together, but troubled son Tomasz proves to be a handful with his violent outbursts and suicidal threats. Their relief is brief when he starts dating women and becomes a radio presenter and movie translator, and the concerned parents must be on constant watch to prevent their son from hurting himself. But Beksiński never believed that family life would always be sunshine and rainbows. As he tapes everything with his beloved camcorder, the 28-year Beksiński saga unfolds through paintings, near-death experiences, dance music trends and funerals...

Two scientists are chosen as guinea pigs for a time experiment: they are placed in hibernation and should be brought back to life after three years. In the meantime, however, World War III breaks out and life has been wiped off the surface of Earth. When they wake up, it turns out that not only 50 years have passed but also that they are the only living specimens of the male sex in a new, underground society composed exclusively of women.

Young and ambitious Captain Vivés has just been appointed group leader at the Grenoble Criminal Squad when Clara's murder case lands on his desk. Vivés and his team investigate Clara's complex life and relations, but what starts as a professional and methodical immersion into the victim's life soon turns into a haunting obsession.

Under the German occupation, in a small French town, the arrival of a new priest arouses the interest of all women... Barny, a young communist and atheist woman, can not however be more indifferent. Driven by curiosity, the young skeptic went to the church in order to challenge this.

In 1930s Prague, a Czech cremator who firmly believes cremation relieves one from earthly suffering is drawn inexorably to Nazism.

On the last day of 1999, 20-year-old Sebastian locks himself in a TV studio. He has two hostages, a gun, and an important message for the world. The story of the attack explores a rebel’s extreme measures and last resort.

Jerzy and Artur’s father dies, leaving behind a valuable stamp collection, which, they discover, is coveted by dealers of varying degrees of shadiness. The more involved the brothers get in their father’s world, the more dire and comical their situation becomes.

A lawyer tasked with defending a robbery-and-murder suspect begins developing doubts about what truly happened.

Rod leads a radio show dedicated to horror. Until suddenly the announcer begins to receive strange calls from a child who desperately asks for help. At first thinks that it is a bad joke until he discovers that this is not the case. These calls hide a dark secret…

Filmmaker Alain Resnais documents the atrocities behind the walls of Hitler's concentration camps.

A quiet and inconspicuous man rents an apartment in Paris where he finds himself drawn into a rabbit hole of dangerous paranoia.

A young man drops out of university and goes to the police. He's done nothing wrong he just wants a job. A particular job. Playing the victim in murder reconstructions. Maybe by getting close to death he can manage to cheat on his own.

A small European town, where sisters Ayia and Mirra live, gets struck down by an unknown disease which takes many lives. Following their mother's death, the younger sister falls ill. Having realized that conventional medicine is useless in the face of the sister's disease, Ayia seeks help from Father Herman, a parish priest and a close family friend. In his house she finds books that are very far from the conventional religion. She gets to know that only penetration into Mirra's sick subconscious mind and discovery of the true cause of her disease will give her a chance to save her sister. Ayia is ready to go through this terrifying ritual, dive into the depths of the subconscious mind, and face the demons residing there. But will she cope with her own fear when she discovers the mysteries of her sister's past? Since the closer to the bottom of the ocean, the darker it gets.

A teenage girl moves into a remote country home with her family, only to discover that the gloomy old house has a horrifying past that threatens to destroy them.

A group of Serbian socialists prepares for the war in a surreal underground filled by parties, tragedies, love and hate.

Seo-jin is a widower still grieving his wife's death. Then he receives the news that his long-lost younger sister, Yoo-jin, who went missing 25 years ago, has turned up. Unlike the rest of his family, who welcome her into their arms, Seo-jin feels that Yoo-jin is a stranger.

An inexperienced young actress is invited to play a role in a film based on Dostoyevsky's 'The Possessed'. The film director, a Czech immigrant in Paris, takes over her life, and in a short time she is unable to draw the line between acting and reality. She winds up playing a real-life role posing as the dead wife of another Czech immigrant, who is manipulated by the filmmaker into commiting a political assassination.

A bad Polish actor is just trying to make a living when Poland is invaded by the Germans in World War II. His wife has the habit of entertaining young Polish officers while he's on stage, which is also a source of depression to him. When one of her officers comes back on a Secret Mission, the actor takes charge and comes up with a plan for them to escape.

An American spy behind the lines during WWII serves as a Nazi propagandist, a role he cannot escape in his future life as he can never reveal his real role in the war.

The film follows Kaspar Hauser, who lived the first seventeen years of his life chained in a tiny cellar with only a toy horse to occupy his time, devoid of all human contact except for a man who wears a black overcoat and top hat who feeds him.

American professor John Holden arrives in London for a conference on parapsychology only to discover that the colleague he was supposed to meet was killed in a freak accident the day before. It turns out that the deceased had been investigating a cult lead by Dr. Julian Karswell. Though a skeptic, Holden is suspicious of the devil-worshiping Karswell. Following a trail of mysterious manuscripts, Holden enters a world that makes him question his faith in science.

A man struggles with memories of his past, including a wife he cannot remember, in a nightmarish world with no sun and run by beings with telekinetic powers who seek the souls of humans.

A successful artist loses control of his life after his young daughter's death. A chance for a new start appears, but all is not what it seems.

Seven episodes, each taking place on a different day of the week, on the theme of suicide and violent death.

Stuck in a passionless marriage, a journalist must choose between her distant but loving husband and a younger ex-boyfriend who has reentered her life

When a girl's body is found on a beach in Poland's Tricity, a prosecutor teams up with the victim's mother on an impassioned quest for the truth.

Not satisfied with the result of a murder investigation in Warsaw's gay community, an officer in 1980s communist Poland resolves to uncover the truth.

