After looking for financial backing to start a business importing Italian scooters, college friends Adam and Stefan meet businessman Gerard.
While initially very helpful, Gerard soon turns violent, and begins to blackmail the pair for increasingly large sums of money while psychologically terrorizing the two men.
[1] Critic Piotr Zwierzchowski compared Krauze's The Debt to Michael Hanecke's Funny Games writing that both films are similar in that they convey the same sense of "powerlessness of the main characters as well as the viewers against the morality-defying spectacle of violence".
[2] Katarzyna Taras considered The Debt, alongside Robert Gliński's 2001 film Cześć Tereska, to be "the darkest portrayal of Poland's reality after 1989".
In 2019, Andrzej Chyra, who played one of the main characters in The Debt, received the Special Zbigniew Cybulski Award for Lifetime Achievement, the jury having emphasized in its verdict his role in Krzysztof Krauze's 1999 film.