Winter Cinema Highlights at Watershed

From the French Film Festival on Tour to a season of Christmas Crackers, the much-anticipated Hamnet by Chloé Zhao (Nomadland, The Rider), plus an extensive year-round Fred Wiseman retrospective for 2026 – there’s plenty to keep you going through the dark winter season at Watershed.

French Film Festival on Tour

Explore the finest new French cinema from some of the country’s most exciting filmmaking talent, both in front of and behind the camera.

Join us for Sylvain Chomet’s (The Triplets of Belleville, The Illusionist) whimsical animated biopic of Marcel Pagnol, A Magnificent Life; Richard Linklater’s joyful tribute to the freewheeling filmmaking of early Godard and the French New Wave in Nouvelle Vague (Tue 9 Dec); and Sirāt (Thu 11 Dec) – Oliver Laxe’s intense bass-heavy odyssey through the desert.

Plus, exclusively for Club Shed members, get 20% of a bottle of our French Rosé wine from the Café & Bar when you show your ticket to any French Film Festival on Tour screening.

Christmas Crackers

We’re closing out the year with a bang with our Christmas Crackers season! Alongside warm-hearted Christmas perennial It’s A Wonderful Life, we’ll be bringing back our recent seasonal staple The Holdovers.

If you're looking for something a little more off the beaten path, we have a one-off screening of Paris Pick-Up in collaboration with Film Noir UK, Stanley Kubrick's alt-Christmas classic Eyes Wide Shut, the deliciously dark comedy Female Trouble from John Waters, and a couple of 10th anniversary showings of cult American indie Christmas, Again. For little ones, families, there’s Moomins and the Winter Wonderland, in this 80th anniversary year of the Moomins. Between Christmas and New Year, we’ll also be bringing back a couple of restored Studio Ghibli highlights with English dubbing, with Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away.

We’ve teamed up with South West Silents to bring you Silent Sherlock – three beautifully restored episodes featuring the famous detective, each complete with newly commissioned scores, courtesy of the BFI.

Our festive drinks menu is in full swing in the Café & Bar, so why not treat yourself to a festive cocktail, mulled drink or a warming hot chocolate while you’re here!

All That Melodrama Allows

Continue to get swept up in a wave of emotion this winter with All That Melodrama Allows; with melodrama maestro Pedro Almódovar’s fabulously freewheeling High Heels Sun 7 Dec and high-camp drama All About My Mother on Tue 9 Dec. On Sun 14 Dec, to mark the 30th anniversary of Todd Haynes’ psychological drama Safe (1995), join Crip Melodrama: She’s Hysterical co-curator Florence Grieve for a discussion exploring the ways disabled women are portrayed within the genre of melodrama. There’s more from Todd Haynes with Far From Heaven (Tue 16 – Wed 17 Dec), his homage to 1950s Sirkian Hollywood melodrama.

The Political is Personal

For those of you that like to keep it real, we’ve got you covered.

We are proud to partner up with Black South West Network to bring you a very special showing of Misan Harriman: Shoot the People + Q&A on Thu 4 Dec with the film's director Andy Mundy-Castle, hosted by Amanda Egbe (UWE). Although he's known for his portraits of A-list celebrities and royalty, Misan Harriman’s true passion is social justice and photographing protest movements around the world; and this latest documentary sees Harriman take that work to a new level on a journey across three continents. 

Going behind the scenes of her administration and her private life, Prime Minister follows Jacinda Ardern as she was catapulted to the top of New Zealand politics, becoming a feminist political icon, resigning suddenly from office and continuing to champion the fight against isolationism, fear, and the distortion of truth.

Also look out for Iranian director Jafar Panahi’s latest act of resistance, It Was Just An Accident for which he won the Cannes Palme d’Or – a darkly comic thriller and an engaging morality tale for our times, out on Fri 5 Dec and playing with a UWE Thought in Action panel discussion after the show on Wed 10 Dec. 

Following its sold-out preview at Bristol Palestine Film Festival, Kaouther Ben Hania’s The Voice of Hind Rajab returns to our screens on Fri 16 Jan. Winner of the Silver Lion at Venice International Film Festival and Tunisia’s entry for Best International Feature at the upcoming Oscars®, this fierce, shattering docudrama asks us to bear witness to the unspeakable suffering of Gaza’s children.

New Year, New Releases

January brings with it a raft of awards contenders, including Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value, an intimate and moving exploration of family, memories and the restorative power of art, which picked up the Grand-Prix award in Cannes and Best International Independent Film at the BIFAs. 

Oscar-winning writer-director Chloé Zhao’s (Nomadland) highly anticipated Hamnet based on Maggie O’Farrell’s acclaimed novel is another ode to the power of art, with phenomenal performances from Paul Mescal (Aftersun) as Shakespeare and Jessie Buckley (The Lost Daughter) as his free-spirit wife Agnes. 

Paul Mescal also stars in The History of Sound, playing alongside Josh O’Connor as a pair of young men who travel through rural Maine, collecting folk songs. Director Josh Safdie (Good Time, Uncut Gems) brings us Marty Supreme, inspired by the life of real-life table tennis player Marty Reisman, starring Timothée Chalamet alongside Oscar®-winner Gwyneth Paltrow. Plus Park Chan-wook (Decision to Leave, The Handmaiden, Oldboy) is back with No Other Choice, a deliriously entertaining satire which follows an unemployed man who, desperate to land a coveted role, develops a ruthless plan to dispatch his competition.

We’ll also be showing the latest from director Philippa Lowthorpe (Three Girls, The Crown, Call The Midwife), with her screen adaptation of H is for Hawk, which boasts a stunning performance from Claire Foy (Wolf Hall, The Crown) – plus wonderful footage of her magnificent feathered co-star – as she reflects on the wilds of grief, and the tenacity and indifference of the natural world.

Nouvelle Vague and a revolution in filmmaking

To tie in with the release of Richard Linklater’s playful and poignant love letter to cinema Nouvelle Vague (which recreates the making of Jean-Luc Godard’s groundbreaking 1960 film Breathless), we are showing three other iconic debut features of the French New Wave alongside Breathless: Francois Truffaut’s semi-autobiographical coming-of-age story The 400 Blows, Jacques Demy’s bittersweet ode to first love and missed opportunities Lola, and Jacques Rivette’s under-seen Paris Belongs to Us, which marked the provocative start to a brilliant directorial career. Vive le cinéma! 

Fred Wiseman - full-scale documentary immersion

With a groundbreaking career spanning seven decades, American filmmaker Fred Wiseman’s body of work is a towering achievement in cinema; both immense in scale and immersive as a cinematic experience. Now aged 95 and only recently retired, Wiseman's pioneering observational style created radical and absorbing films whose subject matter range across social institutions like the prison service to Central Park and the National Gallery. 

To give his documentaries (and you!) space to breathe, the season will run throughout the year, starting in January with Menus-Plaisirs – Les Troisgros, his 4-hour-long gastronomic study of the Troisgros family and their Michelin-starred restaurant.

Knowing Me, Knowing You: The True Self in Japanese Cinema

In Japanese cinema, Akira Kurosawa’s influential Rashomon is a classic example of the ambiguity inherent in understanding characters true motivations. The annual Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme returns with a selection of four features exploring this theme – from new Takashi Miike film Sham to animated tale The Last Blossom and Conflagration, a classic from Kon Ichikawa.

Slapstick Festival 2026

With this year’s festival programme subtitled "Because Laughter is a Form of Resistance”, Slapstick Festival 2026 brings you more than 30 events across five joy-filled days in Bristol, celebrating screen comedy in all its forms. Highlights at Watershed will include a spectacular triple bill of Laurel & Hardy films restored in 4K, a look back at one of the unsung heroines of slapstick Louise Fazenda, the campy and colourful But I'm a Cheerleader starring Natahsa Lyonne, and a family-friendly Relaxed Screening of Illumination Animation's loveable Sing.

For all of the above and more - check our calendar to book tickets for everything that is confirmed, or sign up to our Coming Soon list to the first to know when tickets are on sale. Listen to our monthly Cinema Podcast for more insights and make sure you follow our Letterboxd HQ account for updates.

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