Holiday Movies from Around the World

Hundreds of years ago in Lapland, a little boy named Nikolas loses his family in an accident. The villagers decide to look after the orphaned boy together. Once a year - at Christmas - Nikolas moves to a new home. To show his gratitude, Nikolas decides to make toys for the children of the families as good-bye presents. Over the years, Nikolas's former adoptive families become many, and soon almost every house has presents on its doorstep on Christmas morning. At thirteen, Nikolas is sent to live and work with Iisakki, a grumpy old carpenter, who forbids Nikolas to continue making presents for Christmas. Gradually, however, Nikolas wins Iisakki's trust. Together they begin to look after the Christmas traditional that Nikolas has begun. When the aged Iisakki has to leave Nikolas and move away, the tradition of Christmas presents is once again at risk. Thankfully, Nikolas comes up with a solution that brings children joy every Christmas, even continuing to today.

An art dealer befriends a genie whom he frees from a lamp which he has been imprisoned with by an evil wizard for 2000 years for the accidental death of the evil wizard's daughter when the art dealer is fired by his greedy and corrupt boss.

HOW ABOUT YOU tells the story of Ellie, a young woman left in charge of the residential home run by her older sister, over the Christmas period. Whilst most of the residents have left to spend the festive period with their families, four residents, known as 'the hardcore' remain. Their behavior is so terrible that the home faces closure as potential new residents are put off by their appalling antics.

Brother and sister Viola and Sebastian, who are not only very close but look a great deal alike, are in a shipwreck, and both think the other dead. When she lands in a foreign country, Viola dresses as her brother and adopts the name Cesario, becoming a trusted friend and confidante to the Count Orsino. Orsino is madly in love with the lady Olivia, who is in mourning due to her brother's recent death, which she uses as an excuse to avoid seeing the count, whom she does not love. He sends Cesario to do his wooing, and Olivia falls in love with the disguised maiden. Things get more complicated in this bittersweet Shakespeare comedy when a moronic nobleman, Sir Andrew Aguecheek, and a self-important servant, Malvolio, get caught up in the schemes of Olivia's uncle, the obese, alcoholic Sir Toby, who leads each to believe Olivia loves him. As well, Sebastian surfaces in the area, and of course there is Feste, the wise fool, around to keep everything in perspective and to marvel, like we the audience, at the amazing things happening all around.

Upon the passing of his wealthy father and learning that his father made arrangements to provide comfortably for his long time servant, the housekeeper/cook Vera, and her son Paul, Peter is free to decide what to do with his father's vast country estate without having to worry about what would happen to Vera and Paul if he did sell. What Peter decides first and foremost is to host a New Year's Eve party at the estate with his best friends from Cambridge, a group of six, including himself, who performed together in an acting troupe, the last time being exactly ten years ago upon their graduation, that one a bawdy performance also at a New Year's party at the estate for and unappreciated by Peter's father and his conservative friends, before the six went their separate ways into adulthood. What happens at this gathering will be affected by the issues with which each person is now facing, including the secret Peter has been keeping, it the reason he felt the want to get his friends together at this time. Hollywood TV writer Andrew, Peter's best friend, is accompanied by Carol, his vacuous American television star wife, their marriage buckling under the strain of her quest for greater fame. Married jingle writers Roger and Mary are still dealing with the death of one of their twin babies nine months ago, Mary who has now turned into the most overprotective mother at the expense of all else, arguably including their marriage. Theater costume designer Sarah is accompanied by brash actor Brian, her latest boyfriend of two weeks, he who is just the latest type in her choice of the wrong man, that type in being unattainable, in Brian's case he being already married. And mousy cat lady Maggie, who works for a publishing company, in her loneliness pines for one of her friends, namely Peter, the one that is available - sort of.

Provence, the days before World War I. Rustic well-digger Pascal Amoretti, a widower, encourages fellow laborer Félipe Rambert to date his virgin eldest daughter Patricia, the only of his five who attended a Paris finishing school. Getting drunk, Felipe unwittingly helps her date wealthy general store owner Mazel's handsome, womanizing son, dashing air force pilot Jacques, who gives her a motorbike ride home, make love and get her pregnant. Shortly after, both men are called for military service. On leave, Felipe finds out the truth and still proposes. Jacques is reported missing in action, his family refuses to recognize the baby, so Pascal sends Patricia with it to his outcast sister.

The good-hearted Harbour has spent his whole life trying to take care of his motherless and suicidal little brother, Wilbur. The brothers are inseparable. When in their thirties, they lose their father and inherit his second-hand bookshop. One day Alice enters the shop with her little daughter. Alice is a cleaning lady at the nearby hospital and she sells the books that the patients leave behind. The daughter Mary yearns for a home where the books don't always get sold. Harbour falls in love with Alice and soon all four of them are closely intertwined in each other's lives - and perhaps even deaths.

Agathe lives with her husband and son in a posh apartment in front of the Jardin du Luxembourg. Patrick lives with his son in the back of a van. She is the head of an important contemporary art foundation. He lives thanks to social security and odd jobs. She has graduated after studying for 7 years. He has spent almost 7 years behind bars. She has a good relationship with the Minister of Culture and Arts. He has a good relationship with alcoholic beverages of all kinds. She loves intellectual discussions. He loves occasional sex with big-breasted women. They should have never met, but their sons are inseparable. They will see why in the end.

This is a family story that covers 30 years in the life of the Freytag family, narrated by grandson Robert. When his grandfather returns from Russia in 1949, he becomes part of the German "economic miracle" by producing garden gnomes. Robert's father Klaus wants to become a writer. He marries Gisela, who almost immediately gets pregnant with Robert, but the marriage doesn't work. Both parents abandon the boy, who is raised by both sets of grandparents. While his father belongs to the 1960s generation that rebels against their fathers, he falls in love with the neighbor's's daughter Laura.

In a German restaurant, Chef Martha Klein is the undisputed supreme ruler of the kitchen staff, and woe to any customer who would dare criticize her cooking. Her life is firmly centered around cooking, which takes on a obsessive level with stubborn single-mindedness. Even when she is ordered to take therapy, she still constantly talks about her work and the ironclad control she relishes. All that changes when her sister dies in a car accident, leaving her 8-year-old daughter Lina. Martha takes her niece in and while making inquiries about her estranged father, she struggles to care for this stubbornly headstrong child. Meanwhile, a new chef named Mario is hired on at Martha's restaurant and she feels threatened by this unorthodox intruder. The pressures of her work and private life combine to create a situation that will fundamentally call her attitudes and life choices into question while these interlopers into her life begin to profoundly change it.

Yannis is a 14 year old boy who lives an isolated life with his dad on a small Greek island. After the death of his mother, two of them didn't talk much. One day, Yannis finds a young pelican and decides to take it home. His friendship with the pelican, and meeting with the impulsive 15 year old girl, will mark a change in his life, that will eventually lead to reconciliation with his father.

A picaresque tale. Odd Horton is dependable and contained: he's a train engineer retiring after 40 years of service, living a simple life. His idea of adventure is to fly from one city in Norway to another. Starting on the night of his retirement dinner, Odd has a series of dislocating experiences: a boy insists that Odd sit by his bedside while he falls asleep; misadventure causes Odd to miss his last run; he witnesses an arrest; he assists an old man and makes a friend; he takes a trip with a blindfolded driver; he adopts a dog; he takes stock late one night at the roundhouse; he revisits his mother's disappointment in him. How should he live the rest of his life?

A group of kids grows up on the short, wrong (east) side of the Sonnenallee in Berlin, right next to one of the few border crossings between East and West reserved for German citizens. The antics of these kids, their families, the "West German" friends and relatives who come to visit, and the East German border guards, all serve to illustrate the absurdity of everyday life on the Sonnenallee, and therefore throughout the former East Germany.

ARRANGED centers on the friendship between an Orthodox Jewish woman and a Muslim woman who meet as first-year teachers at a public school in Brooklyn. Over the course of the year they learn they share much in common - not least of which is that they are both going through the process of arranged marriages.

Abby, four years out of college, an aimless child of privilege, comes to Tokyo to be with her boyfriend, who promptly leaves for Osaka. She wants to stay in Tokyo in hopes he'll come back to her, but she's miserable: she speaks little Japanese and has a dull job as a law-firm gopher. She stumbles into the neighborhood ramen shop operated by the aging master chef Maezumi and his wife Reiko. His soup cheers Abby, so she decides to apprentice herself to him. He's uninterested, she's insistent, so he shouts at her and gives her all the cleaning to do. Weeks go by; she's persistent. Will he ever actually teach her to cook? And if he does, will she bring the requisite spirit to the job?

This is the story of a young girl named Elsa who was raised by a single mother (Isabelle) in the city. Isabelle and Elsa begin the film moving in next door to an elderly man who collects butterflies (Julien). Isabelle who "spends a lot of time with her friends" does not pay much attention to her daughter who walks home because her mother forgot to pick her up from school. After meeting her new neighbor, Elsa finds out about the butterflies and in short annoys Julien for a while. Julien receives a mystery package from a fellow entomologist. Julien sets out on his annual attempt to find a rare species of butterfly that he had once promised his son he would find (son dead) in the French country side, specifically a region known as Vercors. Elsa stows away in his car. After being discovered she convinces him to let her come to Vercors with him. They bond while hiking and camping until Julien, who is initially annoyed by Elsa, near the end of the film seems to have a grandfather-granddaughter relationship with her. Elsa falls in a well. The police arrest Julien. Elsa tells everyone it is cool. Isabelle starts paying attention to her child. Julien and Elsa are friends. The mystery package contained a caterpillar which turned out to become the rare species of butterfly Julien set out to find. The species is called Isabelle. So Elsa finds her mother (Isabelle) and Julien finds the butterfly (Isabelle). Surprisingly happy feel for a french film.

The film, adapted from the Eisner award nominated manga by Jiro Taniguchi, follows Thomas, a cynical and tired French comic artist who, while visiting his old family home, loses consciousness - only to awaken 40 years in the past in the body of his younger self. While here he faces the choice of changing events at the cost of his own future - and to unravel a lifelong mystery, the reason for his fathers mysterious disappearance that he knows will happen a few months after Thomas's arrival.

Two young gentlemen living in 1890's England use the same pseudonym ("Ernest") on the sly, which is fine until they both fall in love with women using that name, which leads to a comedy of mistaken identities...