Dir: Kasia Adamik | 112’ | 2026
Warsaw, 1981, and the Cold War is chillingly alive in this taut political thriller, where an academic visit turns into a nightmare of surveillance, brutality and deadly double-crossing. This is a bleak film so be forewarned.
British professor Joan Andrews (the lovely Lesley Manville) arrives at a Polish university just as student unrest explodes into violence disrupting her lecture, years in the writing.
When she witnesses a murder by the secret police and captures the evidence on her Polaroid camera, she becomes an unwilling player in a dangerous game where one wrong move could have international consequences.
Manville is mesmerising as a woman whose scholarly composure is gradually eroded by fear and suspicion. Her elegant, understated performance anchors a story in which ordinary behaviour becomes a potential act of betrayal. Tom Burke adds further intrigue to a shadowy world where allegiances shift as quickly as the political temperature. These two English actors are always worth a watch and here they really carry a film that could be heavy with less talented chops.
Kasia Adamik creates an atmosphere thick with menace, using the oppressive architecture, wintry streets and claustrophobic interiors to evoke a society where nobody can be trusted. The camera prowls through a landscape of paranoia, while the period detail gives the film a suitably grimy, lived-in texture.
Inspired by a short story by Nobel laureate Olga Tokarczuk, this is an espionage thriller less interested in flashy heroics than in the psychological toll of being trapped behind enemy lines. A frostbitten slice of Cold War suspense, with Manville keeping the tension simmering beneath a deceptively cool exterior.
In UK cinemas from 16 October, distributed by Signature Entertainment.