Cold War
Winner of the Cannes Best Director award, Paweł Pawlikowski (Ida) has crafted a brilliant, kaleidoscopic vision of 1950s Europe, bursting with music, dance and the turbulent love of two musicians caught between East and West. Cold War is the big winner of the European Film Awards this year with no less than five awards for best film, director, screenplay, actress and editing.
Based loosely on the story of the director’s own parents, COLD WAR covers the entirety of a couple’s love affair, from their enchanted first meeting in 1949 to the aching denouement of their relationship in the 1960s. Wiktor is a jazz-loving pianist and musical director tasked with auditioning traditional folk musicians as part of a state-sponsored project to champion culture from rural Poland. Young Zula, who turns out to be more torch singer than folk singer, captivates Wiktor at first sight with her beauty and insouciance. Their fates joined, Zula and Wiktor are soon struggling both with personal demons and historical forces that persist in tearing them apart. Taking place in Poland, Germany, Yugoslavia and France, COLD WAR presents an impossible love story in impossible times.