Joyeux Noel - An English-French Film By Christian Carion: Events in Hyderabad

REVIEW FOR JOYEUX NOEL - AN...

Wars are ugly. Christmas is beautiful. One particular Christmas Eve during one of history's worst wars was, however, divine. Period.

Creaking Projectors is screening an Anglo-French movie "Joyeux Noel" ("Merry Christmas"), on 29th October, at News Cafe, Inorbit Mall.

Joyeux Noel is a 2005 film about the World War I Christmas truce of December 1914, depicted through the eyes of French, Scottish and German soldiers. It was written and directed by Christian Carion, and was screened out of competition at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival. It stars Benno Furmann, Guillaume Canet, Daniel Bruhl, Diane Kruger, Gary Lewis and Alex Ferns.

This film is based on the true stories of the World War I Christmas Truce along the Western Front. The story deals with 6 main characters - Gordon (a Lieutenant of the Royal Scots Fusiliers); Audebert (a French Lieutenant in the 26th Infantry and reluctant son of a general); Horstmayer (a Jewish German Lieutenant of the 93rd Infantry); Palmer (a Scottish priest working as a stretcher-bearer); and German tenor Nikolaus Sprink and his Danish lover, soprano Anna S?rensen (2 opera stars).

The events chronicled in this film took place on the killing fields of France where French and Scottish armies were entrenched across from the German army. These armies slaughtered each other for 4 years.

On Christmas Eve, 1914, as German, French, and Scottish regiments face one other from their respective trenches, a musical call-and-response turns into an impromptu cease-fire, trading chocolates and champagne, playing soccer, and comparing pictures of their wives. But when Christmas ends, the war returns.

The movie was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the 78th Academy Awards. The film was one of Ian Richardson's last appearances before his death on February 9, 2007.

Entry to the film screening is by passes of Rs. 100 per head. Please contact 4010-1234 / 99088-12000 for further details.