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Poster for Home by Christmas
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Released
2010 · FILM

Home by Christmas

A film memoir of love, war and secrets

Directed by
Written by
Runtime
93 min
BiographyRomanceWar

Synopsis

A remarkable memoir of resilience, determination and love.Based on filmmaker Gaylene Preston's interviews with her father about his World War II experiences, reconstructed with actor Tony Barry as Ed Preston. Weaving strands of poetic imagined drama, and archival footage into the interview, Preston presents both sides of her parents' wartime marriage: the horror and hardship of battlefield and prison camp juxtaposed with the loneliness and grief of a young wife struggling with a newborn baby and a husband declared missing.Ed Preston, on his way home from rugby practice in 1940, joins the New Zealand Army to go to World War II. His new wife, Tui, is pregnant and distraught, but he tells her not to worry, he'll be home by Christmas. And so he is - four years later - after escaping from a prison camp in Italy. But while Ed is away, Tui has fallen in love with another man.

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How many hands made this film

The scale of the collaboration

Principal cast & crew: 16

These are the principals we have on file — the full crew ran to the hundreds. Every film this size was made by far more hands than any credits list ever names.

Why a floor?

This is a minimum, not a total. We only count the credits we’ve captured so far, and coverage is uneven — a blockbuster might show a few hundred names while another of the same size shows a couple dozen. The real crews all ran into the thousands. The number here only grows as full credits are enriched — so we frame it as a floor, never a headcount.

Craft leads on file

Edited by Paul SutoriusShot by Alun BollingerScored by Jan PrestonDesigned by John Harding

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