By Stephen Campbell

Cold War

Człowiek z nadziei_), and Piotr Borkowski (_Lek wysokosci_), and directed by Pawlikowski, who loosely based the story on events in his parents' lives, to whom the film is also dedicated, the plot of Zimna wojna is simplicity itself. The film begins in 1949, two years since a communist government came to power and the country was provisionally renamed _Rzeczpospolita ludowa_ [Polish People's Republic]. It opens with composer and pianist Wiktor (Tomasz Kot), his ethnomusicologist producer Irena (Agata Kulesza), and rigid state-sponsored overseer Kaczmarek (Borys Szyc) travelling through the isolated rural communities of the Polish countryside, recording folk songs and attempting to find recruits for a folk music school, with the aim of putting together an ensemble to perform nationally, and hopefully, internationally.