Film: Midwinter Break (Cert: 12A)

Film: Midwinter Break (Cert: 12A)

About the film

Gerry and Stella are an older couple who’ve been living in Scotland since leaving Northern Ireland at the height of the Troubles. A trip away to Amsterdam offers the pair a chance to revitalise their relationship, amid some underlying tension over their differing attitudes to faith and Gerry’s concerning drinking habits. But Stella has another reason for wanting to visit Amsterdam, and a revelation from the past forces the pair to finally confront some very hard truths. 

Based on the novel by Bernard Mac Laverty and led by two masterly performances from Ciarán Hinds and Lesley Manville, Midwinter Break is a moving drama about confronting the past as the unspoken rifts of a long relationship belatedly rise to the surface. 

Festivals:

Dublin International Film Festival 2026

Glasgow Film Festival 2026

‘The film creates space for Hinds and Manville to give substantial, intimate, complex performances of the kind that most movies (of whatever sort) do not allow their leads, and Manville in particular is very moving’

★★★★★ Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian

‘Few will [...] fail to be moved by the sadness of the central relationship. A humane work devised by serious minds’

Donald Clarke, The Irish Times

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