Review: In 'Cold War,' a love exiled by communism

It took "Aquaman" two and a half hours just to put a fancy trident in its hero's hands. Pawel Pawlikowski's latest, "Cold War," follows a doomed romance over 15 years and across much of mid-century Europe in a mere 88 minutes. And you're telling me the guy who can swim fast is the superhero?

In two immaculate films in a row, Pawlikowski has put countless filmmakers to shame with his devastating concision. In his Oscar-winning and surprise arthouse smash "Ida" and now in "Cold War," Pawlikowski distills staggering amounts of story into austere monochrome images so deeply expressive you could dive into them.

"Cold War" is a kind of companion piece to "Ida." It's similarly set in post-war Poland, shot in pristine black-and-and white by cinematographer Lukasz Zal, framed in a boxy academy ratio and has jazz music drifting evocatively through it. But "Cold War" begins with a folk song, sung directly into the camera by a pair of peasants, whose plaintive tune foreshadows the heartbreak to come. "Open up my love, for fear of God," they sing.

This image released by Amazon Studios shows Joanna Kulig in a scene from "Cold War." (Amazon Studios via AP)

Pianist Wiktor Warski (Tomasz Kot) is traversing the bleak winter countryside of Poland in 1949 to record folk music and hold auditions for a new school of traditional song and dance. During tryouts, one student stands out to Wiktor: a striking, sultry blonde named Zuzanna, or Zula (Joanna Kulig). She doesn't sing as well as some of the others but she catches the eye of the immediately infatuated Wiktor. The school's other director dryly notes Zulu isn't the mountain girl she pretends to be, plus she's on parole for killing her father.

"He mistook me for my mother so I used a knife to show him the difference," Zula later explains.

Wiktor promptly, inevitably falls for her and Zula isn't far behind. At first, the perilous air of a femme fatale hangs over her. While they lie in a field, she pledges her fidelity to Wiktor even while confessing that she's reporting on him to their communist supervisors.

This image released by Amazon Studios shows Joanna Kulig, left, and Tomasz Kot in a scene from "Cold War." (Amazon Studios via AP)

With Zula front and center, the show is a hit, a success the state quickly co-opts for propagandist means. Soon, they are singing communist anthems with an enormous curtain of Stalin draped behind them. While on tour, Wiktor and Zula resolve to flee to West Berlin, but Zula stands him up. It will be years before they reunite in Paris.

In Pawlikowski's film, it's often what happens in between the cuts that hurts the most. Just as crucial moments rob Zula and Wiktor of years together, time simply gets edited out. When they do finally make a life for themselves in Paris, it's warped by the emptiness of exile. They live in a bohemian loft. Wiktor plays in jazz clubs. They make a record of Zula but she curses the French translations of the songs they sang in Poland. A relationship always tumultuous turns tragic without a country. "In Poland you were a man," she sneers.

"Cold War" is dedicated to Pawlikowski's parents, whom the protagonists are loosely based upon. Whereas the year's other stunning black-and-white excavation of family past — Alfonso Cuaron's "Roma" — is based on Cuaron's own memories, Pawlikowski's film is less a literal recreation. It's more mythically drawn, and seen with a weary, backward-looking resignation.

This image released by Amazon Studios shows Tomasz Kot in a scene from "Cold War." (Amazon Studios via AP)

It's also animated by the filmmaker's own political struggles in Poland, where "Ida" was made a campaign talking point by a nationalist right-wing party that, once in office, drew international criticism for its own ideological management of Polish heritage.

"Cold War" concludes with a forced finality that feels like the film's only stray step. Kot and Kulig have by then forged such an indelible romance that we've come to believe in its persistence. (Kulig, in particular, is astonishing. It seems hardly possible that she covers so much emotional territory. This is the revelation of a retro-styled star of the highest magnitude.)

It's Pawlikowski second-straight masterwork, only one with a critical if seldom-seen error. His movie is too short.

This image released by Amazon Studios shows Joanna Kulig in a scene from "Cold War." (Amazon Studios via AP)

"Cold War," an Amazon Studios release, is rated R for some sexual content, nudity and language. Running time: 88 minutes. Three and a half stars out of four.

Follow AP Film Writer Jake Coyle on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/jakecoyleAP

This image released by Amazon Studios shows Tomasz Kot in a scene from "Cold War." (Amazon Studios via AP)

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Nationwide protests in Iran sparked by the Islamic Republic's ailing economy are putting new pressure on its theocracy as it has shut down the internet and telephone networks.

Tehran is still reeling from a 12-day war launched by Israel in June that saw the United States bomb nuclear sites in Iran. Economic pressure, which has intensified since September when the United Nations reimposed sanctions on the country over its atomic program, has sent Iran's rial currency into a free fall, now trading at over 1.4 million to $1.

Meanwhile, Iran's self-described “Axis of Resistance” — a coalition of countries and militant groups backed by Tehran — has been decimated since the start of the Israel-Hamas war in 2023.

A threat by U.S. President Donald Trump warning Iran that if Tehran “violently kills peaceful protesters” the U.S. “will come to their rescue," has taken on new meaning after American troops captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, a longtime ally of Tehran.

“We're watching it very closely,” Trump said Sunday. “If they start killing people like they have in the past, I think they're going to get hit very hard by the United States.”

Here's what to know about the protests and the challenges facing Iran's government.

More than 390 protests have taken place across all of Iran’s 31 provinces, the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency reported Friday. The death toll had reached at least 42, it added, with more than 2,270 arrests. The group relies on an activist network inside of Iran for its reporting and has been accurate in past unrest.

Understanding the scale of the protests has been difficult. Iranian state media has provided little information about the demonstrations. Online videos offer only brief, shaky glimpses of people in the streets or the sound of gunfire. Journalists in general in Iran also face limits on reporting such as requiring permission to travel around the country, as well as the threat of harassment or arrest by authorities. The internet shutdown has further complicated the situation.

But the protests do not appear to be stopping, even after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Saturday said “rioters must be put in their place.”

The collapse of the rial has led to a widening economic crisis in Iran. Prices are up on meat, rice and other staples of the Iranian dinner table. The nation has been struggling with an annual inflation rate of some 40%.

In December, Iran introduced a new pricing tier for its nationally subsidized gasoline, raising the price of some of the world’s cheapest gas and further pressuring the population. Tehran may seek steeper price increases in the future, as the government now will review prices every three months. Meanwhile, food prizes are expected to spike after Iran’s Central Bank in recent days ended a preferential, subsidized dollar-rial exchange rate for all products except medicine and wheat.

The protests began in late December with merchants in Tehran before spreading. While initially focused on economic issues, the demonstrations soon saw protesters chanting anti-government statements as well. Anger has been simmering over the years, particularly after the 2022 death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody that triggered nationwide demonstrations.

Iran's “Axis of Resistance," which grew in prominence in the years after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq, is reeling.

Israel has crushed Hamas in the devastating war in the Gaza Strip. Hezbollah, the Shiite militant group in Lebanon, has seen its top leadership killed by Israel and has been struggling since. A lightning offensive in December 2024 overthrew Iran’s longtime stalwart ally and client in Syria, President Bashar Assad, after years of war there. Yemen's Iranian-backed Houthi rebels also have been pounded by Israeli and U.S. airstrikes.

China meanwhile has remained a major buyer of Iranian crude oil, but hasn't provided overt military support. Neither has Russia, which has relied on Iranian drones in its war on Ukraine.

Iran has insisted for decades that its nuclear program is peaceful. However, its officials have increasingly threatened to pursue a nuclear weapon. Iran had been enriching uranium to near weapons-grade levels prior to the U.S. attack in June, making it the only country in the world without a nuclear weapons program to do so.

Tehran also increasingly cut back its cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog, as tensions increased over its nuclear program in recent years. The IAEA's director-general has warned Iran could build as many as 10 nuclear bombs, should it decide to weaponize its program.

U.S. intelligence agencies have assessed that Iran has yet to begin a weapons program, but has “undertaken activities that better position it to produce a nuclear device, if it chooses to do so.”

Iran recently said it was no longer enriching uranium at any site in the country, trying to signal to the West that it remains open to potential negotiations over its atomic program to ease sanctions. But there's been no significant talks in the months since the June war.

Iran decades ago was one of the United States’ top allies in the Mideast under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who purchased American military weapons and allowed CIA technicians to run secret listening posts monitoring the neighboring Soviet Union. The CIA fomented a 1953 coup that cemented the shah’s rule.

But in January 1979, the shah fled Iran as mass demonstrations swelled against his rule. Then came the Islamic Revolution led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, which created Iran’s theocratic government.

Later that year, university students overran the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, seeking the shah’s extradition and sparking the 444-day hostage crisis that saw diplomatic relations between Iran and the U.S. severed.

During the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, the U.S. backed Saddam Hussein. During that conflict, the U.S. launched a one-day assault that crippled Iran at sea as part of the so-called “Tanker War,” and later shot down an Iranian commercial airliner that the U.S. military said it mistook for a warplane.

Iran and the U.S. have seesawed between enmity and grudging diplomacy in the years since. Relations peaked with the 2015 nuclear deal, which saw Iran greatly limit its program in exchange for the lifting of sanctions. But Trump unilaterally withdrew America from the accord in 2018, sparking tensions in the Mideast that intensified after Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.

FILE -A student looks at Iran's domestically built centrifuges in an exhibition of the country's nuclear achievements, in Tehran, Iran, Wednesday, Feb. 8, 2023. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi, File)

FILE - An Iranian security official in protective clothing walks through part of the Uranium Conversion Facility just outside the Iranian city of Isfahan, on March 30, 2005. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi, File)

FILE - A customer shops at a supermarket at a shopping mall in northern Tehran, on Sept. 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi, File)

FILE - Current and pre-revolution Iranian banknotes are displayed by a street money exchanger at Ferdowsi square, Tehran's go-to venue for foreign currency exchange, in downtown Tehran, Iran, on Aug. 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi, File)

FILE - People cross the Enqelab-e-Eslami (Islamic Revolution) street in Tehran, Iran, on Sept. 27, 2025. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi, File)

FILE - Protesters march on a bridge in Tehran, Iran, on Dec. 29, 2025. (Fars News Agency via AP, File)

People wave national flags during a ceremony commemorating the death anniversary of the late commander of the Iran's Revolutionary Guard expeditionary Quds Force, Gen. Qassem Soleimani, who was killed in a U.S. drone attack in 2020 in Iraq, at the Imam Khomeini grand mosque in Tehran, Iran, Thursday, Jan. 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)