Much is currently being said about the return of censorship to Poland. Politicians and government officials consider it their right to tell artists what they are to create and how. What and and cannot be shown in their institutions, during their festivals. They are using economic forms of censorship. I will present films banned by regimes from various periods in history. At times, they were very close to being destroyed, while others languished on archive shelves, not being screened. We ought to remind ourselves how artists fought against censorship, how they tried to outsmart it. I will show works which were controversial at the time of their making, those that arouse extreme emotions, at times iconoclastic, which as a result have become part of cinematic history. Some of these are still considered scandalous. These are films which were restricted due to their upsetting content and/or brutal scenes, all the while challenging moralities or political establishments, and will include films restricted by democratic governments in Western countries.