Acquisitions – Foreign Films

X Marx the Spot: Amazon Weaponize for 2018 with Pawlikowski’s “Cold War”

Published on August 21, 2017

Amazon Studios are getting their 2018 awardage game on. Variety reports that they’ve come on board to distribute Paweł Pawlikowski‘s Cold War. Starring his muse Joanna Kulig, alongside Agata Kulesza and Tomasz Kot, this appear to have been in post production mode (we were expecting a Venice showing) for a while now and we’ll likely see a big festival premiere. His previous film Ida (Best Foreign Picture winner at the Oscars), had its world premiere at the Telluride Film Festival in 2013.

Gist: Set against the background of the Cold War in the 1950s in Poland, Berlin, Yugoslavia and Paris – this depicts an impossible love story in impossible times. Two people of different backgrounds and temperaments, who are fatally mismatched and yet fatefully condemned to each other.

Worth Noting: Variety reports that this was first presented to buyers at the Berlin Film Festival – so a deal was likely in the works since Cannes.

Do We Care?: Ida served as a career rebirth of sorts for the filmmaker, and now that we’ve got an auteur friendly distrib backing the project, this larger scaled production will likely be targeted for a top tier fest such as Cannes or Venice.

Eric Lavallée

Eric Lavallée is the founder, CEO, editor-in-chief, film journalist and critic at IONCINEMA.com (founded in 2000). Eric is a regular at Sundance, Cannes and TIFF. He has a BFA in Film Studies at the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema. In 2013 he served as a Narrative Competition Jury Member at the SXSW Film Festival. He was an associate producer on Mark Jackson's This Teacher (2018 LA Film Festival, 2018 BFI London). In 2022 he served as a New Flesh Comp for Best First Feature at the 2022 Fantasia Intl. Film Festival. Current top films for 2022 include Tár (Todd Field), All That Breathes (Shaunak Sen), Aftersun (Charlotte Wells).