When Peter Watkins shot The Journey in the mid-1980s the clock stood at three minutes to midnight, pushed there by Cold War tensions between the USA and the Soviet Union. This is the moment, in August 2026, that the film returns to the screen at BFI Southbank. The War Game (1966)An important part of the meaning of the film comes from the process of its making. Everything after that Watkins built by hand, town by town, raising money with communities in each location and circling the globe three times before it was finished. It also produces the reflexive distance he uses across his many films, exposing the film’s own construction, drawing the viewer in and implicating them.