Making the Grade

Illuminating the challenges often unseen beyond the toys, trees and tinsel, people in a small Irish village reflect on their difficult relationships with Christmas. "So This Is Christmas" is a heartwarming and charming portrait from award-winning director Ken Wardrop, which perfectly exemplies his innate ability to tell the stories of ordinary people, depicting their thoughts, feelings and experiences in an empathetic way. Beautifully rendered in 35mm, the film is authentic and compassionate, and a valuable addition to the Irish documentary canon.

Despite a war raging close by, mud treatments and electroshock therapies continue at Kuyalnik Sanatorium, an enormous 1970s brutalist building on the shores of Odesa, where a small group search for love, healing, and happiness.

A farmer finds a deer befriending his herd of cattle.

Mom and Me takes a look at tough guys and the even tougher women who raise them. Set in Oklahoma City, apparently voted the manliest city in the United States, this creative documentary from Irish director Ken Wardrop ("His & Hers") chronicles the relationships between ten sons and their mothers.

Candice longs to escape the boredom of her seaside town, but when a boy she dreams about turns up in real life, she becomes involved with a dangerous local gang.

In Cinque Terre on Italy’s northern Riviera, fewer than 3,000 locals endure over four million tourists each summer. Across one chaotic season, six very different lives play out in parallel, revealing a sharply funny and surprisingly tender story of paradise under pressure in the age of social media driven tourism.

An observation about an inept but lovable farm dog.