It’s surely no surprise that amid today’s geopolitical turmoil, filmmakers are turning to the events of the cold war for inspiration. A flurry of productions set in the 1980s have been released just this year.
See, for instance, The Brink of War, a political drama focused on the 1986 summit at Reykjavik between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev. Then there’s action-comedy Mayday, starring Ryan Reynolds and Kenneth Branagh. Polish director Kasia Adamik’s new film, Winter of the Crow, is a welcome addition to this burgeoning genre. It’s an evocative film which skilfully exposes the stifling controls and murderous repression inherent in Soviet-era totalitarianism.
Based on a short story by Nobel prize-winning Polish author Olga Tokarczuk and set in December 1981, the film stars the always excellent Lesley Manville as Professor Joan Andrews. She’s a rather blunt British academic invited to give a guest lecture on the other side of the iron curtain, in Warsaw.
The film begins in a world in which Joan is firmly in control – her office in the ivory towers of academia – before shifting to one which is alien and disorientating. The Poland of the 1980s is depicted as a cold, austere and unforgiving place. Joan arrives in a landscape of concrete, blizzards and leaden skies.
She witnesses the heavy-handed arrest of a young mother and then, soon after, sees Alina’s idealist brother, Marek (Jakub Guszkowski), murdered by the secret police (known colloquially as “crows”). What follows is a taut and tense escape thriller in which Joan, Polaroid camera in hand, is pursued through the Warsaw winter by the shadowy agents of the Polish state. Her objective is the safety of the British Embassy and, ultimately, a flight home.
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