Merry Christmas

A new movie celebrates an impromptu truce between British, French and German soldiers during World War I in order to observe and share Christmas.


"Joyeux Noel" (Merry Christmas) -- a joint German, British, Belgian, French and Romanian production directed by Christian Caron -- covers a 24-hour festive truce made by three lieutenants who meet in no-man's land, depicting the historical Christmas truce of 1914, which saw thousands of British and German troops on the Western Front temporarily lay down their arms and meet to exchange gifts and shake hands. The Frenchman Audebert (played by William Canet), the Scotsman Gordon (Alex Ferns) and the German Horst Mayer (Daniel Brühl) lead their men in laying down their rifles after four months of fighting that saw hundreds of thousands killed. There is even a love story -- between Prussian soldier, Nikolaus Sprink (Benno Führmann) and Danish singer Anna Sorensen (Diane Kruger) -- who arrives in the German trench on Christmas Eve after a concert in a château occupied by the German general staff. And soon war begins again as the commanders put an end to the jolliness: the Scottish regiment is disbanded, the priest returns home, the French soldiers are dispatched to Verdun and the Germans to the Russian front. "Joyeux Noel" takes some dramatic license but is historically faithful on the whole, focusing on a special truce.