COLD WAR – RIVIERA FILM FESTIVAL
A critical and audience favourite at this year’s Cannes Film Festival (where it was awarded the Best Director prize) and already touted as a major 2019 Oscar contender, Paweł Pawlikowski’s follow-up to the Academy Award-winning Ida is a ravishing, music-fuelled romance charting two mismatched lovers caught between East and West in 1950s Europe.
In the ruins of post-WWII Poland, pianist Wiktor (Tomasz Kot) is commissioned by the Soviet state to form a musical ensemble to help rekindle national pride. Whilst touring the villages in search of talent he meets the beautiful Zula (Joanna Kulig, in a luminous star-making turn), a fiery and charismatic singer with a past, and the two fall passionately in love. When a performance in Berlin offers the pair an opportunity for escape to the West, a last-minute decision finds them stranded on either side of the Iron Curtain. As the years march on, Wiktor and Zula – whether through political circumstance or personal impetuosity – struggle to find their moment in time…
Spanning 15 years across Warsaw, Berlin, Paris and Yugoslavia, and inspired by the lives of the director’s own parents, COLD WAR meticulously recreates the era with virtuosic black-and-white cinematography, and an extraordinary soundtrack that is used judiciously to signify the passage of time and shifting relationships. Warmly lyrical, impossibly romantic and visually stunning, COLD WAR is one of the films of the year.
Reviews:
“Exquisite. Musically glorious and visually ravishing.” Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian
“A masterpiece. A precious discovery, often unutterably beautiful.” Kevin Maher, The Times
“A dazzling odyssey thought the human heart. The most achingly romantic film you’ll see this year.”
Phil de Semlyen, Time Out
Awards:
Camerimage 2018
Winner Silver Frog |
Main Competition Lukasz Zal |
Cannes Film Festival 2018
Winner Best Director |
Pawel Pawlikowski |
European Film Awards 2018
Winner European Film Award |
European Editor Jaroslaw Kaminski |
European Actress Joanna Kulig |
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European Director Pawel Pawlikowski |
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European Screenwriter Pawel Pawlikowski |
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European Film Pawel Pawlikowski Ewa Puszczynska Tanya Seghatchian |