Fernand's Christmas
2025 · 10m · Canada
Directed by François Pierre Breau
Tones: contemplative, tender
An ailing Acadian man who has played Santa across the Acadian Peninsula for years must give up parts of the tradition, until his family brings the celebration to him.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
It's a Hallmark premise dressed up in regional specificity—family tradition, aging patriarch, the works—and I kept waiting for the film to twist the knife or interrogate what we're actually mourning here, but it settles into genuine tenderness instead, which almost feels like a betrayal of better instincts.
Breau locates the film in a precise cultural lineage—Acadian Christmas ritual as both personal and collective inheritance—and the formal restraint, the way absence and adaptation are allowed to breathe rather than resolve, positions this squarely in the contemplative family drama tradition that values observation over catharsis.
The entire film hinges on a single directorial choice: letting the Santa suit stay off-screen while its presence defines every frame, a decision that transforms what could've been maudlin into something almost unbearably precise about loss and belonging.