Paweł Pawlikowski | 2018 | Poland | 1h29m | Presented in the original Polish with English subtitles.
COLD WAR tells a love story shaped and repeatedly broken by history. Set across several decades in post-war Europe, the film follows two people drawn together by music and desire, then pulled apart by borders, politics, and temperament. Rather than tracing a continuous relationship, Paweł Pawlikowski presents the story in fragments, allowing gaps in time to do as much emotional work as the scenes themselves.
Shot in stark black and white, the film echoes European cinema of the 1950s and 60s. Pawlikowski uses a narrow frame and careful composition to emphasise constraint, both emotional and political. Joanna Kulig delivers a magnetic performance, shifting between vulnerability and defiance, while Tomasz Kot plays her counterpart with quiet rigidity. Music runs through the film as a living force, evolving from folk traditions into jazz and popular forms as the characters move across countries and systems.
When it premiered, COLD WAR was widely acclaimed and won Pawlikowski Best Director at Cannes. Some viewers found its emotional distance challenging, but others saw that distance as the whole point. The film is less interested in resolution than in repetition, showing how love persists, mutates, and fractures under pressure. It stands as a concise, unsentimental portrait of intimacy shaped by ideology and time, and makes for a fantastic date movie.
LOCATION: FOMO Secret Cinema, Bazari Orbeliani, Tbilisi.
HOW TO FIND US: Enter via Atoneli St above Carrefour. Take the stairs on the left behind the jewellery stand. The cinema entrance is one flight up in the stairwell.
FOMO Secret Cinema • Bazari Orbeliani, 0102 Tbilisi, Georgia
