It’s been five years since the Academy Award®-winning Ida, but Pawel Pawlikowski’s achingly beautiful portrait of l’amour fou proves well worth the wait. Like Ida, Cold War also uses the 4 x 3 Academy framing and glowing black-and-white cinematography. It follows the passionate attraction between two people from vastly different backgrounds and fatally different temperaments. Unfolding against the backdrop of the Cold War years in Poland, Berlin, Yugoslavia and Paris, the film renders believable a complicated and disruptive love in impossible times. Refined, educated Wiktor is a talented musician and musicologist. He plays the piano, loves jazz, and conducts an ensemble performing traditional Polish folk melodies. During an audition, he discovers Zula, an ambitious and resilient young woman from the wrong side of the tracks, who will do anything to survive. Despite Zula’s continual betrayals, Wiktor maintains that she is the only woman for him. Reportedly, director Pawlikowski based the characters on his own parents.

In competition for the FIPRESCI and Ricky Jay Magic of Cinema Awards.

Actress Joanna Kulig will be in attendance for the screenings on January 7 and 8