ROSE

Poland, 1945. World War II will soon be history. But for many the horror is by no means a thing of the past. Tadeusz, a former officer in the Polish Home Army and survivor of the bloody Warsaw Uprising, has fled to the Masurian lake district. In this frontier zone between Germany and Poland, a region laid to waste by retreating German soldiers and the advancing Red Army, Tadeusz meets the peasant woman Róża. Unlike her ethnic German neighbours, who fled for fear of the vengeful Poles and the Russian soldiers drunk on victory, Róża has stayed put, continuing to tend her farm as best she can. She has suffered a fate similar to countless others: her German husband was killed in action, and she has been raped repeatedly. Róża takes the stranger into her home in the hope he can protect her against further assaults. In a time of permanent menace and violence the pair offer each other strength and stability, which gradually deepens into love. But Tadeusz soon rouses the suspicion of the local military, while Róża faces the threat of expulsion on account of her German roots.