Poland has selected Pawel Pawlikowski’s “Cold War,” which won the best director prize at the Cannes Film Festival, as its entry in the contest for the Academy Award for best foreign-language film. Amazon Studios holds U.S. rights to the pic. Pawlikowski’s last film, “Ida,” won the Oscar in 2015.

According to Variety reviewer Guy Lodge, “Pawlikowski sketches an intense long-term love affair between two mismatched Polish musicians whose relationship is defined less by affection than a mutual, mistrustful, latently violent hostility.” He concludes: “Like ‘Ida,’ ‘Cold War’ is a soberly moving study of the disappointment and insecurity that can blossom from supposed renewal: It’s a romance in which new beginnings and endings can be hard to tell apart.”

The film was produced by Tanya Seghatchian and Ewa Puszczyńska, who was also a producer on “Ida.” The cinematographer on the black-and-white pic was Łukasz Żal, who was Oscar-nominated for “Ida.”