BFI announces Cinema Expanded, The Films of Frederick Wiseman, a comprehensive season of the documentarian’s work

“I attempt to create a dramatic structure drawn from ordinary experience and un-staged, everyday events.”

– Frederick Wiseman

The BFI announces today a forthcoming comprehensive retrospective of the work of legendary documentarian Frederick Wiseman on both the big and small screen, running from 20 October 2025 to 31 January 2026. With a groundbreaking career spanning seven decades, Wiseman, now 95 years old, is one of the great American storytellers. All films in the BFI presentations are new digital restorations, which were overseen by the director himself.

Cinema Expanded, The Films of Frederick Wiseman, a season at BFI Southbank, will open on 20 October 2025 and run across three months. 15 films made from 1967 – 2017 will screen in loosely thematic and chronological order; first will be the renowned films about public institutions, followed by works grounded in a strong sense of place, before concluding in January with a group of films about cultural life. Titles include Titicut Follies (1967), La Danse: The Paris Opera Ballet (2009), National Gallery (2014) and Ex-Libris: The New York Public Library (2017). 

On 2 January 2026, Menus-Plaisirs – Le Troisgros(2023), Wiseman’s most recent film, an epic 4-hour observation of a family restaurant in rural France that has held three Michelin stars for 55 years over four generations, will open in cinemas in the UK and Ireland through BFI Distribution.

A major BFI Player collection, launching in early January 2026, will enable audiences across the country to stream nine Wiseman films at their leisure. This, which will be the largest collection of the director’s films available on one streaming platform in the UK, will comprise: Titicut Follies (1967), High School (1968), Welfare (1975), Multi-Handicapped (1986), Central Park (1989), Ballet (1995), National Gallery (2014), Ex-Libris: The New York Public Library (2017) and Menu-Plaisirs – Les Troisgros (2023).

Also in early January, a 3-disc Blu-ray box set, containing Titicut Follies (1967), High School (1968), Hospital (1970), Juvenile Court (1973) and Welfare (1975), will be released by the BFI, packaged with an illustrated booklet and additional special features.

The BFI Southbank season is programmed by Sandra Hebron, previously an Artistic Director of the BFI London Film Festival and now Head of Screen Arts, National Film and Television School, who worked with Frederick Wiseman, presenting several of his films at the BFI London Film Festival. She says:

“His documentaries, shot vérité-style, are meticulously edited narratives chronicling life’s complexities through rich portraits of social and cultural institutions. Wiseman’s themes are expansive: democracy, power, inequality and community, to name a few; but his focus is compellingly specific and humane. Whether revealing shortcomings in social support or celebrating culinary excellence, he has a unique eye – and ear – for detail.”

Films screening in the first part of the BFI Southbank season each look at an institution. Wiseman’s landmark debut film from 1967, Titicut Follies, goes inside a Massachusetts institution for the criminally insane and unflinchingly documents the treatment and mistreatment of inmates. Often blurring the distinction between doctors and patients, and at times harrowing to watch, the film was prohibited from general distribution in the USA for almost 25 years. Season programmer Sandra Hebron will be introducing a screening of the film on Wednesday 29 October.

A year later, with High School, Wiseman ventured inside a large city high school – the most everyday of American institutions – where lessons range from debates on existentialism to a simulated space flight. Assembled with dry humour, a series of formal and informal encounters between teachers, students, parents and administrators shows how education is steeped in the passing on of social and moral values. A discussion about Wiseman’s aesthetics and approach with filmmaker Andrea Luka Zimmerman, curator Matthew Barrington and Sandra Hebron will follow a screening of the film on Thursday 13 November.

Unfolding like a Kafka-esque novel, 1975’s Welfare is a remarkable, clear-sighted film that shows the absurdities of New York’s welfare system from the point of view of the staff administering it and the claimants attempting to access it. Deeply serious yet playful in parts, Welfare reveals the myriad reasons why people seek help and the complex tangle of regulations that frequently deny it.

Multi-handicapped, from 1986, is one of a series of four films shot at the Alabama Institute for the Deaf and Blind. It focuses on students and their teachers, dormitory parents and counsellors at the Helen Keller School. As they collectively navigate the daily routines of self-care, work and recreation, Wiseman’s intelligent and compassionate gaze encourages the viewer to ponder questions of equality and independence.

Public Housing, made in 1997 and widely regarded as one of Wiseman’s finest films, looks at the Ida B. Wells housing project, home to some of Chicago’s poorest inhabitants. This affecting, absorbing study of people in and around the project challenges cliched representations of poverty, race and housing inequality.

The second part of the season, in December 2025, will include screenings of Central Park (1989), Aspen (1991), Belfast Maine (1999), At Berkeley (2013) and In Jackson Heights (2015). The final part, running throughout January 2026 will feature The Store (1983), Ballet (1995), La Danse: The Paris Opera Ballet (2009), National Gallery and Ex Libris: The New York Public Gallery (2017).

Wiseman’s new film, Menus-Plaisirs, will be released in cinemas in the UK and Ireland on 2 January 2026. It is a film about the Troisgros family and their three restaurants, Troisgros – Le Bois sans Feuilles, Le Central and La Colline du Colombier, all located in central France. Troisgros, founded 93 years ago, has held three Michelin stars for 55 years. The film shows the day-to-day operations involving food purchase and preparation through to service, illustrating the great artistry, ingenuity, imagination and hard work of the restaurant staff in creating, preparing, and presenting meals of the highest quality. The present chef at Troisgros, César, is the fourth generation of the family to be in charge there. Scenes show the purchase of fresh vegetables at the market, visits to a cheese processing plant, a vineyard, a cattle ranch working on best farming practices, and to an organic farmer whose farm, along with the garden of the restaurant, provides organic produce. 

• Cinema Expanded: The Films of Frederick Wiseman is at BFI Southbank from 20 October 2025 to 31 January 2026, with a selection of films available to stream on BFI Player and a BFI Blu-ray box set release in early January.
• Menus-Plaisirs – Le Troisgros is released in cinemas in the UK and Ireland by BFI Distribution on 2 January.