Everyone has fallen in love with The Artist.

Over 13,000 of you have been to see it here at Watershed, making Michel Hazanavicius' multiple award-winner our most successful film ever (we're thirty years young in June with some 7500 films under our belt, so it's certainly no mean feat). Why has it been so popular? We sat down with Head of Programme Mark Cosgrove to discuss why this joyous silent movie has made such a big noise.

If The Artist had opened here a few years back 13,000 of you would never have been able to see it. We've had big hitters before – the likes of Pulp Fiction and The English Patient spring to mind – but were never able to keep them playing for longer than a couple of weeks. With our open runs system, however, which started in September 2010, we can be flexible and respond to customer demand – and thus break a record!

Mark first saw The Artist in May at the Cannes Film Festival, and while he thought it was the perfect entertaining film for Watershed audiences and that it would be a big hit, he never predicted what a smash it would be. Of course, following Cannes it had the backing of one Harvey Weinstein, who said it was 'unimproveable': that rarest of things, the complete package.

Here in Bristol we have an established love of silent comedy: we have a whole Festival dedicated to it in the shape of Slapstick, so it seemed like divine intervention when The Artist received its UK release in January, the same time as Slapstick returned once more to venues across the city.

After The Artist's earlier London release the critics printed their reviews between Christmas and New Year and Mark feared that it would get lost in the avalanche of festive information: how wrong he was. Seven weeks and counting, and it's still here.

Why has this black and white, silent, academy ratio (that’s technical speak for the original silent era squarer picture) film surprised us all and been so popular? Mark put it like this:

"There is definitely something particularly unique about The Artist. It’s a brilliantly made, brilliantly realised homage to the silent era that absolutely delivers at all levels: it's got three perfect central performances (from Jean Dujardin, Bérénice Bejo, and Uggie the Dog), it's technically superb (did you know it was shot in a slightly faster film speed?), and it's incredibly smart.

"It's very knowing about cinema in general – not just the silent era – without being gimmicky, or a pastiche. Rather than be a facsimile, there's an authenticity and deep love about it that will be very difficult to pull off again. It's a rare beast, and I doubt we’ll see another film like it for a very long time to come."

Simply put, The Artist is a love story, with dancing, and a dog. Who needs anything else? It's a perfect example of why we all fall in love with cinema, with film, and with Hollywood itself. And of course it's French!

Find out if silence is golden at Sunday's Oscar® ceremony – and if you're not one of the 13,000 people who have seen it here already, you'll be pleased to hear that The Artist continues to tap its toes at Watershed for another week.