Strike

Strike is a 2006 Polish-German historical drama film directed by Volker Schlöndorff. The film covers the formation of Solidarity and centers around work and labor organizing in the Lenin Shipyard in Gdańsk, Polish People's Republic. The film follows the life of Agnieszka Kowalska (Katharina Thalbach) in about three segments covering first her life as a dedicated worker in communist Poland of the early 1960s (DVD chapters 1-4), then following events leading to the Polish 1970 protests (chapters 5-10), and finally the early 1980s, including the dedication of the Monument to the Fallen Shipyard Workers of 1970, the Gdańsk Agreement, and Martial law in Poland (chapters 11-15). The character of Agnieszka is a composite based loosely based on the lives of two women labour activists, the crane operator Anna Walentynowicz and the diminutive shipyard nurse Alina Pienkowska. Plot Agnieszka Kowalska is a hardworking welder in the Lenin Shipyard in Gdansk. She is honored as a heroic worker, "activist of the Year" award for being a superquota worker. This is her tenth time winning the award, so she is given a television. She even gives a speech of how she came to the shipyard in 1950 with nothing, and now she has a profession and a home. She truly seems thankful for what the shipyard has given her. However, after the official ceremony, other women workers confront her for working so hard and they are clearly not even trying to beat the quotas set forth by the Party.