Monday Night Film Series presents, Cold War-FR

Event Details:

In the 1950s, a music director falls in love with a singer and tries to persuade her to flee communist Poland for France. Nominee for best foreign language film. Rotten tomatoes rating - 93 per cent. 

Three years after winning the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film with his beautifully composed Ida, Paweł Pawlikowski (The Woman in the Fifth) returns with an equally haunting, distinctive, and moving work.  Cold War - Poland’s entry to the 2019 Academy Awards in the same category as Ida — shares many characteristics with its predecessor: stunning use of black-and-white photography and 4:3 aspect ratio, careful attention to mood and tone, and an exquisite narrative set in mid-20th century Poland. Nominated for three Oscars for Best Foreign Language Film, Best Director and Best Cinematography.

Rooted in the personal, Cold War is also infused with the broader social and political realities of postwar Eastern Europe. Based loosely on the story of the director’s own parents, the film 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 (Tomasz Kot, Gods, The Photographer) is a jazz-loving pianist and  musical director tasked with auditioning folk musicians as part of a state-sponsored project to champion culture from rural Poland. Young Zula (Joanna Kulig, Ida, The Woman in the Fifth), 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 threaten to tear them apart.

Cold War is a superbly realized visual poem that resonates all the more thanks to its striking use of choral, classical, and jazz music. It is also a bittersweet reflection on a relationship and an era.

“The Polish filmmaker has conjured a dazzling, painful, universal odyssey through the human heart and all its strange compulsions. It could be the most achingly romantic film you’ll see this year, or just a really painful reminder of the one that got away.”—Phil de Semlyen, Time Out

This term, 15 limited release, independent foreign and Canadian films will be shown. Admission is $8/film, but a half-yearly $12 student film society membership reduces admission cost to $5/film. The series is open to all. Memberships are available at Tilley Hall 102 every Monday night.

For further info, contact NB Film Co-op at 455-1632 or info@nbfilmcoop.com.

The NB Film Co-op, in partnership with the UNB Faculty of Arts and the Toronto Film Festival, presents the series.

Building: Tilley Hall

Room Number: 102