Polish filmmaker Paweł Pawlikowski’s last feature, Ida, won Best Foreign Language Film at the 2015 Academy Awards. He might repeat the achievement at this year’s Oscars, even with strong competition with fellow short-listed titles Burning, Shoplifters, and frontrunner Roma. A black-and-white period piece that already won Best Director at Cannes, Cold War is a beautiful, sad, musical achievement about two star-crossed lovers in the 1950s, with bracingly real performances from Tomasz Kot and Joanna Kulig (who deserves Best Actress consideration for her dance scene alone). It’s not an easy watch — even at 85 minutes; related: more movies should be 85 minutes — but it’s a must-see.
Here’s the official plot synopsis.
Cold War is a passionate love story between a man and a woman who meet in the ruins of post-war Poland. With vastly different backgrounds and temperaments, they are fatefully mismatched and yet condemned to each other. Set against the background of the Cold War in 1950s Poland, Berlin, Yugoslavia, and Paris, it’s the tale of a couple separated by politics, character flaws, and unfortunate twists of fate — an impossible love story in impossible times.
To see when Cold War, which also stars Borys Szyc, Agata Kulesza, Cèdric Kahn, and Jeanne Balibar, opens near you, click here.
