Joyeux Noël
| Merry Christmas | |
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Theatrical release poster
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| Directed by | Christian Carion |
| Produced by | Christophe Rossignon Benjamin Herrmann |
| Written by | Christian Carion |
| Starring |
Benno Fürmann Guillaume Canet Daniel Brühl Diane Kruger Gary Lewis Alex Ferns |
| Music by | Philippe Rombi |
| Cinematography | Walther van den Ende |
| Edited by | Judith Rivière Kawa Andrea Sedlácková |
| Distributed by |
UGC Fox Distribution (France) Sony Pictures Classics (U.S.A.) |
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Release date
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Running time
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116 minutes |
| Country | France Germany United Kingdom Belgium Romania |
| Language | French English German |
| Budget | $22 million |
| Box office | $17,709,155 |
Joyeux Noël (English: Merry Christmas) is a 2005 film about the World War I Christmas truce of December 1914, depicted through the eyes of French, British and German soldiers. It was written and directed by Christian Carion. It was screened out of competition at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival.
The film, which included one of the last appearances of Ian Richardson before his death, was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the 78th Academy Awards. It is a fictionalized account of an actual event that took place in December 1914 when Wilhelm, German Crown Prince, sent the lead singer of the Berlin Imperial Opera company on a solo visit to the front line. Singing by the tenor, Walter Kirchhoff, to the 120th and 124th Württemberg regiments led French soldiers in their trenches to stand up and applaud.
Director Christian Carion has mentioned in the beginning of January 2015 that he is considering making a sequel centered on the lives of Lieutenants Horstmayer and Audebert.
The story centers mainly upon six 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 fiancée, mezzo-soprano, Anna Sørensen (two famous opera stars).
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