Winter Crow Review: Leslie Manville Shines in Gripping Cold War Thriller

Academic psychologist Manville finds herself trapped on a barren lot of a tower block in 1980s Warsaw. Strange and surreal details add to the ominous mood. The thrilling Cold War element, with its Kafkaesque undertone, takes us back to Poland's sinister 1981 crisis, when General Jaruzelski had just introduced martial law in response to the dangerous climate of freedom created by the Solidarity trade unions.

Academic psychologist Manville finds himself trapped in a tower block wasteland in 1980s Warsaw. Strange and surreal details add to the ominous mood

Wednesday 14 October 2026 14:00 CEST Last modified on Wednesday 14 October 2026 14.01 CEST

Part Cold War art thriller, part Kafkaesque joy, the film transports us to the grim horror of Poland in 1981, when General Jarozleski has just introduced martial law in response to the dangerous climate of freedom created by Solidarity trade unions. The director is Kasia Adamic, daughter of Agnieszka Holland of The Green Border. The film is adapted from a story by Olga Tukarchuk called Professor Andrews Goes to Warsaw.

Leslie Manville plays Professor Andrews, an academic clinical psychologist (like Tokarchuk) from Britain with a strict and compulsive demeanor. His hobby is taking Polaroid pictures. He has achieved a certain level of fame for a book about dreams, despite the fact that he claims he never dreams himself. Andrews is invited to give a lecture in Warsaw, during which he begins to outline views on mental illness not unlike those of Ling or Foucault. But his speech is chaotically interrupted by the shouts of students who say that Poland itself is a tyrannical haven.

The main protester's sister, Alina (Zofia Wichlaks), happens to be a graduate student tasked with showing Professor Andrews around, but there's confusion right from the start: Andrews loses his bag, then has to give Alina his passport so he can go back to the airport to look for it. He cannot go to a hotel and has to stay in an apartment in a posh area, owned by Alina's relatives. And when he wakes up the next morning, Andrews finds a tank in the wasteland of the wretched and truly abandoned tower block. The crackdown has begun, the killer's secret police are everywhere, and he has no passport. Perhaps Andrews would do well to get used to staying in Poland for the foreseeable future – or perhaps forever.

It's a fascinating and haunting film, though one where the storytelling drive slows down a bit, and perhaps the film could have benefited from tighter editing - though that might mean losing some of the weird and surreal details, like the live carp that people line up to buy food and keep in the bathroom.