Three Polish builders and their foreman, Nowak, (Jeremy Irons), the only one to speak English, enter Britain illegally to renovate the home of a rich fellow Pole. All goes according to plan, but it is December 1981, time of the military crackdown in Poland and Nowak, the only one to find out, decides not to tell the others. Things start to go badly wrong, the workers are restless, money begins to run out, and Nowak resorts to increasingly desperate measures to keep everything under control. A Cannes Film Festival award winner.