In from the Cold

Spotlight

After the Cannes premiere of Pawel Pawlikowski's Cold War, the entire auditorium burst into applause and almost everyone turned to the seat occupied by the person whose face was projected on the i9-by-8-meter screen: Polish actress Joanna Kulig, who sat with her face buried in her hands.

Three years after his drama Ida became the first Polish movie to win the Oscar for best foreign-language film, Pawlikowski has returned with Cold War, a desperate love story shot in monochrome, set in a divided postwar Poland and co-starring Kulig. "She has an aura and light," says Pawlikowski, who wrote his new film with the actress in mind. On camera, Kulig's power is in her range: the part of Zula, a countrygirl ingenue, spans 15 years and innumerable transformations, which Kulig navigates with remarkable agility.

Pawlikowski is widely heralded as the most exciting Polish filmmaker working today, though his film Ida has been criticized by members of Poland's leading right-wing Law and Justice party. The director's success, however, has been a beacon of hope for Poles who despair at the country's tilt toward authoritarianism. And so has Kulig's.

Like her character in Cold War, Kulig, who will soon welcome her first child with her director husband, Maciej Bochniak, hails from a small town in Poland. "Being from the countryside gave me a spine," she says, "it's also why I'm so accepting."

Kulig, who was born in 1982, doesn't remember the rule of Communism, which weighs so heavily on her character. "But I think about my grandmother and mother and how hard it was for them," she says. "Poland is a country of strong women."

DOROTA LECH

To read more about Joanna Kulig's star turn, visit VF.com.