Film Forum

From the director of IDA, winner of the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film (2014), comes a passionate drama of Wiktor and Zula, star-crossed lovers (based on the filmmaker’s parents), who move from Soviet-dominated Poland to the jazz clubs of Paris and back again over a 15-year period, beginning in 1949. Writes Jonathan Romney: “COLD WAR revels in cinematic glamour. As Wiktor, Tomasz Kot embodies a stormy-browed artistic masculinity, while as the mercurial, powerfully sexual Zula, too earthy and complex to be an off-the-peg femme fatale, Joanna Kulig… gives a vibrant performance that many critics have suggested with more than a sigh of nostalgia, marks her out as a new Jeanne Moreau.” (Sight + Sound)

POLAND     2018    90 MINS   IN POLISH AND FRENCH WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES

AMAZON STUDIOS

Reviews

“One of the best pictures of the year.”
– A.O. Scott, The New York Times

“Critic’s Pick… Thomasz Kot, a genius of slow-burning longing… a terrifically vivid Joanna Kulig… Throughout, their longing for each other — as well as the music they make, together and apart — expresses searching ideas about art and authenticity, national identity and cultural nostalgia… [Filmmaker Paweł Pawlikowski’s] two impossible, irresistible lovers are so beguiling that you would like to linger longer, learn more, see more. The movie is filled with ordinary and surprising beauty, with gleaming and richly textured surfaces, and the kind of velvety black chiaroscuro you can get lost in. Its greatest strengths, though, are its two knockout leads, who give the story its heat, its flesh and its heartbreak.”
– Manohla Dargis, The New York Times​

“Paweł Pawlikowski’s terrific, smoky-cool love story… deftly walks the line between appropriately somber and great, sophisticated fun. COLD WAR is a crisply controlled saga of romantic torture, glamour, forbidden border crossings and more betrayals than you can shake a black silk stocking at.”
– Stephanie Zacharek, TIME

“Grade: A-. Gorgeous. A haunted romantic epic in miniature, like a novel written with the careful, precise economy of a short story… Achieves something rare and coveted: the perfect fusion of the political and the personal… There are shots in this movie so monochromatically gorgeous that you want to crawl inside them. Kulig… delivers a remarkable performance. Giving off hot embers of passion and cutting disdain, her Zula is a one-woman cultural revolution, the face of a Europe—bloody but breathing—that clawed its way out of the rubble of World War II.”​
– A.A. Dowd, The A/V Club

“Resembles a waking dream. A ravishingly romantic one at that. Gorgeous. Kulig is a rare kind of screen presence.”
– Chris Nashawaty, Entertainment Weekly

“Glorious. Made with a verve and lyricism which rekindles memories of the glory days of European New Wave cinema.  Invokes memories of Milos Forman, Jiri Menzel, and Francois Truffaut at the start of their careers. Never loses its intimate and playful quality (and) retains a quiet humour throughout.”
– George McNab, The Independent (UK)

“A transfixing miniature. The cold war at the center of this restless, ellipsis-filed film is one between heart not territories. Wholly riveting to watch, Kulig rifles through moods and attitudes with the casual magnetism of a young Jeanne Moreau, or even a Euro Jennifer Lawrence. The lovingly handpicked soundtrack, ranging from darkly mesmerizing folks curiosities to torchy blues standards to a climatic, ethereal wave of Glenn Gould-interpreted Bach. A film crafted with almost eerie exactitude across the board… (with) finely wrought black-and-white compositions, each frame an exquisite tile of milk-and-malt melancholy.”
– Guy Lodge, Variety

“Bittersweet and unbearably lovely.”
– Leslie Felperin, The Hollywood Reporter

“Musically rich. A sparely told, intimately black-and-white drama that uses ellipsis and suggestion to squeeze it complex zigzagging narrative into a taut but emotionally resonant 88 minutes. A moving, mature drama about modern European history, the vagaries of art in a political world and the ways in which love can find itself contending with pressures of the state. COLD WAR revels in cinematic glamour. Kulig gives a vibrant performance.”​
– Jonathan Romney, Sight + Sound