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It’s firmly on Time Out’s top 20 films of the year and newly short-listed for an Oscar: now ‘Cold War’ has picked up five prestigious European Film Awards trophies to add its fast-growing rep. Pawel Pawlikowski’s masterful, lovelorn romance won Best European Film, Best Screenplay and Best European Director for the adopted Londoner.
Another ‘Cold War’ winner was Joanna Kulig, its magnetic female lead, for Best Actress. As she told us, only Pawlikowski’s persuasion had stopped her from retiring from acting altogether prior to taking this role.
Other winners on a starry night in Seville included Ralph Fiennes, who collected a special award for Achievement in World Cinema, and Armando Iannucci. The Scot won Best European Comedy for ‘The Death of Stalin’, another five-star classic that, in a just world, would also be winning Oscars. All of them, probably.
‘This film is banned in Russia,’ Iannucci told the audience, ‘so you’re all now on the list. Don’t eat or touch anything... but apart from that have a good evening.’
‘Cold War’, meanwhile, is one of nine films on the Oscars’ shortlist for Best Foreign Film. Also in the running are ‘Birds of Passage’ (Colombia), ‘The Guilty’ (Denmark), ‘Never Look Away’ (Germany), ‘Shoplifters’ (Japan), ‘Ayka’ (Kazakhstan), ‘Capernaum’ (Lebanon), ‘Roma’ (Mexico) and ‘Burning’ (South Korea).
What are the 20 best films of 2018? Read Time Out’s picks here.