Screening Date: 10 February 2026, Tuesday, 8:00 pm / 1 March 2026, Sunday, 2.00 pm

Director: Peter Watkins

Screenplay:  Peter Watkins

Cast: Alan Pope, George McBean

UK / 1964 / 69 min. / Black and White / English, Scottish Gaelic / Turkish Subtitles

“They have created a desert and called it peace.” In Culloden, Peter Watkins “reports live” from the final battle of the 1745 Jakobite uprising. The Jacobite army, composed of clans from Northern Scotland who defied the British government's forces in Prince Charles Edward Stuart's struggle for the throne, is slaughtered within hours. After this defeat, the British government turns Northern Scotland into a “desert” by massacring the people hiding in the mountains, sparing neither children, women, nor babies.

Commissioned by the BBC, Watkins’s Culloden recounts the 1745 massacre through a live war broadcast narrative. Fishermen, farmers, and ordinary people in the clan armies are first left hungry and thirsty, then slaughtered by the British government's advanced weapons, while interviews with soldiers are accompanied by numerical data on the massacre. With its narrative style reminiscent of war reporting on television, Culloden brings a slice of history to both the present and the future, carrying the echoes of many wars from that day to the present, including Vietnam, its point of departure.

* The film is going to be screened together with The War Game.