Joyeux Noël

They™ say you should write what you know. For me, that is the sudden loss of the most important person in my life, my father. Beyond being my north star, he was my foremost artistic educator + collaborator. Learning I was now in a world without him was my greatest fear realized and eons worse than I could have imagined.

Throughout our twelve years together, my husband, Alex, and I have made maudlin Christmas films for the holiday weary in hopes they feel seen at such an aggressively cheerful time of year. Dad left in mid-November 2017 and when the 2018 holiday season rolled around, it made perfect sense to dedicate our next Christmas film to him in light of how devastatingly depressed we were compared to previous years! Without the ability to call or see my Dad anymore, it was fitting that our final form of communication be art.

To avoid sentimentality, we employed a French New Wave style in ‘Joyeux Noël.’ We leaned on its signature existential voice-over to marry the heartbreaking with the darkly comedic. Haley, our heroine, is isolated from friends and family to highlight the singular, lonely experience of grief. All I wanted in the wake of my Dad’s death was to be held by everyone and no one at the same time. I felt utterly alone amongst my large family because he wasn’t with me.

My loneliness deepened when I sensed we were all grieving a different person. The person I knew went by the nickname ‘Titties,’ and wanted ‘I told you I was sick.’ scrawled across his tombstone, but to my sister, he was just ‘Daddy.' My goal with the feature is to explore how a family copes with this emergence of competing mythologies of the person they love + miss so much. Instead of isolating Haley, I want to smother her with family as they gather for the holidays to apportion their late paterfamilias’ belongings a year after his death.

Making a Christmas movie about a family fighting over their father’s belongings + legacy is exactly the type of irreverent film my Dad would have relished. I can only hope he has seen our initial little $500 foray from his telescope on the moon and sends his approval for the feature.

With that, I proudly present to you, ‘Joyeux Noël.’