This time the story begins with the scream of six-year-old Ania (Katarzyna Piwowarczyk), which at dawn pierces the quiet of a gloomy concrete housing estate. However, it could just as well be the scream of the film’s main character, Majka (Maja Barełkowska), officially the girl’s sister, but in fact her mother. The mental state of the twenty-two-year-old is outlined in the very next scene in which the neurotic, slightly neglected woman drops out of university with a smile on her lips, although she is already in her final year. Majka cannot arrange her life because she feels robbed of her own child, which she gave birth to when she was sixteen and – under pressure – gave to her mother Ewa (Anna Polony) to raise.
The atmosphere in the house, where the grandmother takes possessive care of the girl, the grandfather (Władysław Kowalski) sits in his room tinkering (interestingly, he deals with pipe organs) and pretends not to see or hear anything, and the child’s mother has to restrain her maternal impulses, becomes unbearable. This is evident at the very beginning of the film, when Majka tries to soothe the crying Ania and is forcefully pushed away by Ewa, who gives vent to her own unsatisfied maternal instinct by taking care of the girl. The desperate protagonist, hating her mother more and more, decides to kidnap Ania and go with her to Canada. A stop on the road to a ‘better world’ is supposed to be a visit to Wojtek (Bogusław Linda), the child’s father, who years ago had to accept Majka’s decision and renounce his paternity.
As in other parts of Kieslowski’s series, the commandment that inspires the story can be applied to many characters and situations. Firstly, the theft that sets the plot of the film in motion is the abduction of Ania ('Kidnapping in Tiutiurlistan', as the six-year-old puts it), whom Majka kidnaps, resorting to a trick straight out of a thriller film. Secondly, taking the child away from Majka can also be called stealing. Her mother explained the situation as necessary to avoid a scandal, but it can be assumed that the motives of the ageing woman, who always wanted to have more children, were largely selfish. The shots in the first part of the film, showing Majka from behind a window, from behind the net of a child’s bed, or from behind the fence of the kindergarten where Ania plays, convey well the alienation and sense of exclusion of the main character, emotionally separated from her daughter.