Oscar-winner Pawel Pawlikowski follows his box-office sensation Ida with this bittersweet tale of an impossible love that won him the Best Director prize at the Cannes Film Festival. Set between the late 1940s and the early 1960s, Cold War is, as the title implies, a Soviet-era drama, but it inventively avoids the clichés of many a classical-minded World War II art film, tracking the tempestuous love between pianist Wiktor and singer Zula as they navigate the realities of living in both Poland and Paris, inside and outside of the Iron Curtain. Shot in crisp black-and-white and set to a bewitching jazzy score, Poland’s entry to the 2019 Academy Awards consummately depicts an uncompromising passion caught up in the gears of history.