Hudson Film Festival’s “Winter Watch” Awards Season Screening Series returns January 8–11, bringing four free, well-timed screenings to Hudson at Time & Space Limited and Story Screen Cinema. Now in its third year, the midwinter series has become a dependable antidote to January inertia—a chance to catch conversation-driving films communally, on a big screen, when awards buzz is at its loudest and daylight is at its shortest.
“Winter Watch” launched in December 2023 as part of the year-round programming of the Hudson Film Festival, founded by John Maybee, Sonia Marcela Freeman, and Sarah Peters. While the festival’s main event unfolds each summer, “Winter Watch” serves a different purpose: offering access, immediacy, and warmth—literal and figurative—during a season that begs for a dark room and a compelling story.
The 2026 series opens January 8 at Time & Space Limited with Belén, an intimate Argentine drama that moves at the pace of real life rather than plot mechanics. Focused on questions of migration, belonging, and emotional inheritance, the film favors accumulation over exposition—small gestures, glances, and silences that add up to something quietly devastating. It’s the kind of film that rewards patience and lingers afterward, which feels exactly right for a winter opener.
On January 9, “Winter Watch” detours into higher-octane territory with F1 at Story Screen Cinema. Set inside the glossy, ruthlessly competitive world of Formula One racing, the film pairs pure spectacle with old-fashioned rivalry and ego. It’s a crowd-pleaser (Brad Pitt and Javier Bardem star) with serious horsepower, proving that awards-season cinema doesn’t have to whisper to be taken seriously.
The program returns to Time & Space Limited on January 10 with Hedda, a sharp contemporary reimagining inspired by Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler starring Tessa Thompson. Here, the classic themes—entrapment, control, and the quiet violence of expectation—are filtered through a modern lens, trading corsets for contemporary anxieties. The result is tense, claustrophobic, and performance-driven, with the kind of psychological pressure that builds scene by scene.
The series closes January 11 with Come See Me in the Good Light, a documentary that leans into intimacy rather than distance. Centered on artists navigating love, illness, and the creative impulse, the film is tender without being sentimental, finding grace in moments that are unresolved, imperfect, and deeply human. It’s a fitting closer: reflective, generous, and quietly hopeful.
“We launched the ‘Winter Watch’ series three years ago to give the community the opportunity to see some of the most critically acclaimed films of the year for free, and many that were not shown in Hudson previously,” says Maybee. “Winter is a perfect time of year to come together with friends and family in the cinema, and see the films you’ve been hearing about or wanting to see.”
Past “Winter Watch” selections have included eventual Oscar winners and major contenders—from Anora to Anatomy of a Fall—and this year’s concise lineup continues that tradition. In the dead of winter, when the days feel short and the world feels loud, “Winter Watch” offers something simple and sustaining: a seat, a screen, and a reason to show up together.
All the films in the Hudson Film Festival’s “Winter Watch” Awards Season Screening Series are free, but an RSVP is required.
