Awarded the Golden Palm for the best screenplay at the 1982 Cannes Film Festival, Jerzy Skolimowski’s script for Moonlighting was written in scarcely three weeks. The picture is inspired by feelings of isolation in a foreign country, enhanced by the lack of knowledge of the spoken language. The feature is set in the early 1980s, at the time of the Solidarity protests in Poland. Nowak (Jeremy Irons), Banaszak (Eugene Lipinski), Wolski (Jiri Stanislav) and Kudaj (Eugeniusz Haczkiewicz), four builders from Poland, arrive to London in early December in order to renovate a Kensington mansion, a job for which they would earn more money than a yearly salary in their mother country. One day, Nowak, the only English speaker of the workers, discovers the declaration of martial law in Poland. Hence forth, Nowak is faced with the difficult decision, of whether or not to share this frightening news with his colleagues.
