(courtesy YouTube)
Oh my heart!
What a lovely story and yes, it might be an ad for Netto Marken-Discount in Hannover, Germany but it has so much originality and warmth and loveliness that you want to watch it again and again.
Focusing on the idea that “It’s a gift to be different”, The Real Santa offers a highly original take on the man in red’s origin story, starting in a Hogwarts-like school where a kid in a red hoodie is teased for his full spread of facial hair and his tendency to say “Ho Ho Ho”.
The poor kid is treated as an oddity among oddities, and eventually has enough of the bullying and flees into the snowy dead of night where he meets Rudolph and well, things just get more jolly and touching from there.
Honestly, there’s more Christmas goodwill and heartfelt feeling in this beautifully animated festive short film by Philippe Tempelman than in many Christmas feature films of late and it will touch your heart like nothing else and want to embrace all the different people out there if only to assure they are loved and special, and who knows … they may just go on to change peoples’ lives.