Pavel Pawlikowski’s Cold War is a passionate love story between a man and a woman who meet in the ruins of post-war Poland. With vastly different backgrounds and temperaments, they are fatefully mismatched and yet condemned to each other.

Set against the background of the Cold War in 50s and 60s Poland, Berlin, Yugoslavia and Paris, Cold Waris shot in rich tones of black and white, and in “Academy format” (3:4), as was Pawlikowski’s previous film, Ida. It’s a tragic tale of a couple separated by politics, character flaws and unfortunate twists of fate – an impossible love story in impossible times.

A NewScreen coup: We screened Cold War, the day before it was released 🙂

Thanks to Norris for this recommendation. The Guilty is Danish director Gustav Möller’s feature film debut… a terse, nail biter set in an emergency call center. Police officer Asger Holm has been demoted to desk work after some initially unexplained incident. As the movie opens, he’s wrapping up his last day on the job. Tomorrow he’ll face an inquiry about the mysterious incident, after which he expects to be back on the street with his partner.

Holm isn’t having a very good last night in the call center, abused by drunkards and idiots with stupid requests for help, but then takes a call from a frightened woman named Iben who manages to convey through a series of “yes”s and “no”s, and pretending to speak to her little daughter, that she’s been kidnapped, and is being driven by her captor to some unknown location. Holm becomes a man obsessed, determined to rescue Iben.

This is edge-of-seat stuff, with a lesson to be learned by all of us.