Less hieratic than Ida, Cold War has a lot to offer to the audience Maybe Pawlikowski would have not won Best Director Award at Cannes if it wasn’t for the sumptuous acting displayed in this cruel, jazz-drenched and Mizoguchi-esque tale of two lovers

| Original Score: 5/5 | Jan 21, 2025

As the romance gradually evolves, so too does our captive investment in its provocative story and stylish nature.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Jul 14, 2024

Another stunning work of perfectly placed ellipses and calculated restraint, Pawel Pawlikowski’s Cold War is a film filled with images as iconic and austere as its blunt title.

| Nov 8, 2023

Two fine lead performances drive the central relationship which is filled with intense passion but also missed opportunities at every turn.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Aug 19, 2022

Cold War has an epic sweep that’s a lyrical gem, almost visually imagistic, and that’s very close to a masterpiece.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Aug 17, 2022

Cold War marks a huge personal statement by the director, with photography that makes it a scintillating film to watch in HD

| Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 7, 2022

Episode 16: The Age of Innocence

| Original Score: 98/100 | Sep 1, 2021

Cold War recalls the visual aesthetic of the Polish Film School, the cinematic movement, inspired in part by Italian neorealism, that flourished in the period of mild liberalization that began in 1956, three years after Stalin's death.

| Aug 26, 2021

An entirely visceral, poetic and unapologetic ode to the essential mystery of love (...) a diamond and a dagger, in one.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Jul 30, 2021

Pawel Pawlikowski's magnificently romantic and visually bewitching new film Cold War deals in the secret languages and strange understandings between true lovers

| Jul 6, 2021

Its fast pace, coupled with its use of history as an intermittent backdrop to love, is strangely, hauntingly unique.

| Original Score: 9/10 | Dec 5, 2020

The free expression of love and music is curtailed by a repressive regime [Full Review in Spanish]

| Sep 19, 2020

There's a certain subtleness in film only reached by few. It's that softness mixed with bitter and tension that allows some movies, where the esthetic reigns and the story flows, to become a bona fide exquisiteness. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 9/10 | Sep 2, 2020

The bulk of Cold War, Polish director Pawel Pawlikowski's 2018 Academy Award-nominated film, exists in the quiet peripheries.

| Aug 25, 2020

Pawlikowski may have decent artistic instincts, but those prove entirely inadequate in face of the complex questions bound up with the postwar conditions.

| Aug 5, 2020

Despite an economical running time, Cold War works through a breathtaking range of emotions lived in the moment, and fateful decisions which must be lived with forevermore.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 31, 2020

The result is a film that we respect, even admire, for its technical prowess more than we hold in our hearts. That is unless you hail from Poland, in which case you might get historically emotional.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jul 24, 2020

It's an odd concoction at points, breathless but entirely at home within its own lungs.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 24, 2020

The ending is beautiful, but I feel like the rest of the film didn't quite earn it.

| Jul 17, 2020

[T]he script ... hints and signifies rather than expressing or emoting. We love the leads not because we know them, but because they're gorgeous.

| Jul 1, 2020