Film Review: So This is Christmas is heartwrenching documentary film-making

"Wardrop and his characters certainly don’t try to sugarcoat their reality, but there’s something refreshingly authentic about the various experiences of Christmas, and especially when their achingly honest testimonies are juxtaposed with glimpses of tinsel, fake snow, and the standard festive bonhomie."

So This Is Christmas.

• So This is Christmas
• ★★★★☆
• Cinema release

Set in an unnamed Irish village, So This is Christmas (12A) is a documentary by Ken Wardrop that follows a number of people in the run-up to the festive season, with the twist that none of them are looking forward to a traditional Christmas.

We meet Annette, who lives alone, and who remembers a childhood in which “joy was not a thing we knew”.

Shane tells us that both of his parents died at Christmas, which is why he hates the season, while the recently bereaved Jason is struggling to make Christmas work for his two sons.

Elsewhere, a woman living with body dysmorphic disorder describes eating a Christmas dinner as her worst nightmare, while a single mum on the poverty line tries to figure out how to make sure Santa arrives as expected.

So This Is Christmas.

It sounds bleak, and Wardrop and his characters certainly don’t try to sugarcoat their reality (“Loneliness is one thing, but being forgotten is something else”), but there’s something refreshingly authentic about the various experiences of Christmas, and especially when their achingly honest testimonies are juxtaposed with glimpses of tinsel, fake snow, and the standard festive bonhomie.

Wardrop has a knack for unobtrusively persuading people to open up and deliver their unvarnished truth, and while So This is Christmas is on one level a corrective to the Yuletide saccharine sweetness, it also — a Christmas miracle, perhaps? — cuts to the very heart of why we celebrate at the darkest time of year.