French Christmas movies

Celine Art
Dec 22, 2023
2 min read

Updated: Dec 13, 2024

Christmas is fast approaching, the vacations are starting, and the cold has long since set in. It's the time many people have been waiting for to curl up under the blanket on the sofa and enjoy the long winter afternoons comforted by a Christmas movie.

Here's a list of French Christmas movies to help you practice your French while you're relaxing:

1. Docteur ?

Synopsis :

It's Christmas Eve. The luckiest Parisians are getting ready to unwrap their presents with their families. Others are watching TV alone at home. Still others, like Serge, are working. Serge is the only SOS-Médecin on duty that evening. His colleagues have all bailed out. In any case, he no longer has a say in the matter, because he has taken too many liberties with the practice of medicine, and he's facing disbarment. One visit follows another, and Serge reluctantly tries to keep up with the pace when the address of his next consultation comes up. It's his daughter's, and she calls him for help. He arrives on the scene at the same time as Malek, an Uber Eats delivery boy who is also on duty that evening. A long night begins.

2. Joyeux Noël

Synopsis :

The film follows the daily lives of soldiers at the front in late 1914 during the First World War. It then depicts the incredible event that took place there on Christmas Eve, namely a short-lived truce in which German and French soldiers put down their weapons, came together, exchanged cigarettes and chocolate, and wished each other "Merry Christmas".

3. La Bûche

Synopsis :

The film tells the Christmas story of a special blended family of three girls and their parents, now separated. Throughout the evening, several revelations turn the lives of the three young women upside down, including the discovery of a new family member...

4. Le père Noël est une ordure

An adaptation of a play of the same name that has become a classic of French cinema, with lines that will live long in the memories of this (Lamian) generation. A film from 1982 that hasn't aged a bit with the passing years. I couldn't resist adding it to my Christmas movie list.

Synopsis :

The Parisian SOS distress-amitié hotline is disrupted on Christmas Eve by the arrival of eccentric fringe characters who cause a chain of disasters.