Picture Credit: Focus Features
Polly Findlay’s acclaimed and deeply moving drama Midwinter Break is officially packing its bags for Netflix. Following its initial SVOD debut on Peacock earlier this spring, the Focus Features indie will officially be making the jump to Netflix US on August 10th, 2026.
Based on the celebrated 2017 novel by Bernard MacLaverty and adapted by MacLaverty alongside Nick Payne (We Live in Time), Midwinter Break marks the impressive feature directorial debut of acclaimed theater director Polly Findlay.
The intimate, slow-burn drama stars two of cinema’s most reliable veterans, Academy Award nominees Lesley Manville (Phantom Thread, The Crown) and Ciarán Hinds (Belfast). They play Stella and Gerry, a retired, long-married couple living a quiet life in Scotland after fleeing Ireland during The Troubles decades prior. Hoping to shake up their comfortable but stagnant routine, Stella books the two of them a winter getaway to Amsterdam. However, the picturesque vacation quickly becomes an emotional reckoning. As old memories, unspoken traumas, and unresolved tensions (including Gerry’s quiet struggles with the bottle and Stella’s deepening religious faith) bubble to the surface, the couple is forced to confront the true state of their marriage.
Reviewers heaped praise on the film upon its initial release in theaters back in February, with many affectionately comparing it to a senior-citizen version of Richard Linklater’s Before trilogy. The true draw, unsurprisingly, was the masterful central performances. Critics noted that Manville and Hinds effortlessly capture the lived-in rhythms, quiet resentments, and enduring warmth of a decades-long marriage, making the 90-minute film a magnificent and deeply affecting watch.
How the Universal/Focus Features Netflix Window Works
If you’ve been keeping track of our ongoing coverage of Universal Pictures movies coming in 2026 and beyond, you’ll know that the live-action slates for Universal and its specialty studio Focus Features currently follow a rigid, fast-tracked 18-month Pay-1 window.
Under this deal, movies don’t head to Netflix immediately after their theatrical and PVOD runs. Instead, they make an exclusive four-month pit stop on Universal’s own streaming service, Peacock. Midwinter Break already completed the first leg of this journey, having made its SVOD debut on Peacock back on April 10th, 2026.
Exactly four months after that Peacock debut, Stella and Gerry’s Amsterdam getaway rotates over to Netflix. That means Midwinter Break will officially release on Netflix US on August 10th, 2026.
Once it arrives, it will remain in the Netflix library for exactly ten months (until June 2027) before rotating back over to Peacock for the final four months of the Pay-1 window.
Picture Credit: Focus Features
Will you be checking out Midwinter Break when it arrives on Netflix this August? Let us know in the comments down below. For more on what’s coming up in August, check out our full schedule here.
