In 2013 a polish film won the academy award for the best foreign film, the film IDA was praised by critics as a masterpiece shot and black and white with a powerful message about religion.

Director Paweł Aleksander Pawlikowski has a career as a documentary filmmaker focusing on lyricism and irony earning a good reputation as a filmmaker.

Pawlikowski comes back with another beautiful powerful film already winning awards around the world and competing at the Academy Awards for best cinematography, best foreign film, and best director.

Cold War tells the story of Wiktor Warski (Tomasz Kot) A sophisticated conductor and musicologist traveling through Poland with his producer Irena (Agata Kulesza) finding singers and dancers forced to play into the communist propaganda machine. During auditions, Wiktor meets Zuzanna "Zula" Lichoń (Joanna Kulig) a woman with a dark past but with so much talent.

Quickly Wiktor and Zula start an intense romance during the tour around Europe, where Wiktor ask Zula to escape with him out of the communist regime in Polland, the orchestrated plan fell apart because Zula never shows up. The couple is reunited again in Paris where Wiktor now have jazz and Zula still touring for the government of Polland.

The two become attached with each other & their ongoing relationship which morphs into an angst-riddled obsession that traverses Western & Eastern Europe.

Cold War is a masterpiece, with powerful performances, especially by Joanna Kulig. The cinematography is out of this world, you can easily freeze frame the film and is a perfect picture by an artist.

Pawlikowski borrows visual from the best and greatest filmmakers of all, you can see Bergman, Tarkovsky, Bresson, Varda, and Renoir. to tells this love story so destructive, like the whole Cold War itself.