Synopsis
France, 1914, during World War I. On Christmas Eve, an extraordinary event takes place in the bloody no man's land that the French and the Scots dispute with the Germans…
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Cast
- Diane KrugerAnna Sörensen
- Benno FürmannNikolaus Sprink
- Guillaume CanetAudebert
- Gary LewisPalmer
- Dany BoonPonchel
- Daniel BrühlHorstmayer
- Alex FernsGordon
- Steven RobertsonJonathan
- Frank WitterJörg
- Bernard Le CoqThe General
Recommendations
- 90
The Hollywood Reporter
With a cast of Scottish, German and French actors all speaking their own language, writer-director Christian Carion has fashioned a deeply moving and uplifting piece. - 90
Variety
A period drama marbled with humor, bold gestures and bittersweet consequences. - 88
USA Today
Joyeux Noël is gritty and disturbing with its extended scenes of war and destruction. It also is emotional, even a touch sentimental. - 75
Christian Science Monitor
If audiences are hesitant to believe that the fraternization in this film really happened, it will be because of the storytelling, not the story. - 70
Village Voice
Carion is no Jean Renoir, but he does strike an appealingly low key of tender, faintly goofy affinity between the combatants. - 70
L.A. Weekly
Joyeux Noël finishes up as no more than a garden-variety tearjerker, neatly packaged for Oscar candidacy. It's not hard to see why the French chose this inoffensive weepie as their nominee for best foreign-language film, when they might have had Jacques Audiard's far superior, if more difficult, "The Beat That My Heart Skipped" or Arnaud Desplechin's "Kings & Queen." - 70
Los Angeles Times
The uncomplicated humanism of Joyeux Noël, with its Christmas message of peace, feels at once irrefutable and refreshing. - 67
The A.V. Club
Though a painless time-passer, Joyeux Noël ultimately contributes little to the venerable anti-war genre beyond its curious message that to some degree, war is hell because it prevents soldiers from making really neat friends and pen-pals from different counties.
