Pawel Pawlikowski

A sweeping, delirious romance begins in the Polish countryside in 1949, where Wiktor, a musician on a state-sponsored mission to collect folk songs, discovers a captivating young singer named Zula. Over the next fifteen years, their turbulent relationship will play out in stolen moments between two worlds: the jazz clubs of decadent, bohemian Paris, to which he defects, and the corrupt, repressive Communist Bloc, where she remains, universes bridged...

The Woman In The Fifth follows American novelist Tom Ricks as he arrives in Paris determined to renew a relationship with his estranged wife and daughter. When the longed-for meeting goes poorly, he ends up in a seedy hostel on the outskirts of the city. Unable to pay for his room and board, he agrees to work as a night guard at a warehouse for the proprietor and spends the hours writing elaborate, imaginative letters to his daughter.