Lesley Manville & Zofia Wichlacz Reunite in 'Winter of the Crow'

Filming on Lesley Manville's next major motion picture, Winter of the Crow, has officially wrapped. The project was first announced in January 2024, when HanWay Films boarded the production, which was already filming in Warsaw. One of the current crop of low-key successful indie film distributors that tends to board promising-looking titles that could make a play for awards season, its recent titles include 2024's The Return and the upcoming Hot Milk; boarding Winter of the Crow was seen as a sign this movie would be one to watch once it was completed.

A 1980s-set period thriller, Winter of the Crow's script is described as "a dark, yet comical, Cold War thriller in a surreal and cinematic setting" of the Polish capital during the coldest years of the Cold War, seen through the "subjective point of view of an outsider to a society that is traumatized by totalitarianism." The film was inspired by and adapted from the short story "Professor Andrews in Warsaw" by Polish writer and activist Olga Tokarczuk, initially published in 2001's short story collection Playing on a Multitude of Drums. 

Winter of the Crow is the second film by this particular group of filmmakers to be adapted from Tokarczuk's writings. Her 2009 novel, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, was made into the 2017 Silver Bear (Alfred Bauer) Prize-winning Spoor (Pokot) by Polish director Agnieszka Holland, whose team included Winter of the Crow's helmer, Kasia Adamik. (Holland does not direct this project but is an executive producer.)

Here's the film's synopsis:

Warsaw, December 13th, 1981: Overnight, martial law is declared and a whole country turns into a prison. Taxis are replaced by tanks. Citizens are treated like criminals. Having just arrived the previous night, British professor Joan Andrews suddenly finds herself trapped in a satellite town, like a rat in a maze. When she witnesses the murder of a student by the secret police, Joan becomes a target herself!

Isolated from the outside world, she must rely on intuition, survival instinct, and imagination. She will outsmart a totalitarian regime and its communication ban by supporting a young resistance member and smuggling incriminating photographs out of Poland.

Topline cast joining Manville (The Crown) include her World on Fire co-star Zofia Wichlacz, as well as Tom Burke (The Lazarus Project), Rhianne Barreto (The Outlaws), Andrzej Konopka (The Nordic Murders), and Ali Cook (Ragdoll). Supporting cast includes Sascha Ley (Fever), Denis Jousselin (The Last Ashes), Magdalena Smalara (War Girls), Miron Jagniewski (The Crown of Kings), and Julian Nest (Blood Red Sky).

The film was directed by Adamik, who adapted the script alongside writers Sandra Buchta and Lucinda Coxon from Olga Tokarczuk's “Professor Andrews in Warsaw.” The film is produced by Olga Chajdas, Stanislaw Dziedzic, Katarzyna Ozga, Nicolas Steil & Sam Taylor for Wild Mouse Production, Film Produkcja, Iris Productions, and Film and Music Entertainment. Holland executive produces alongside R. Paul Miller, James DeMasi, Jonny Boston, Archil Gelovani & Ursula Romero Gerberding for ISB.

Winter of the Crow is currently listed for a global theatrical premiere on Friday, February 27, 2026.