Christmas, Again

It’s a tender and warm film about missed connections and ships that, for whatever reason, end up passing in the night.

Crafted with affection and attentive to workaday rhythms, this first feature from writer-director Charles Poekel demonstrates an authentic feel for the neighborhood, where he himself once sold trees.

Delicate and restrained, the film offers the messages of redemption and renewal we so often crave from a Christmas movie without wrapping its themes and characters in tinsel.

Christmas, Again is categorically not a romance. Poekel defuses that thought early on, as she comes and goes, but what he captures is better: kinship and hope with home-spun warmth. What better tidings than these?