DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT

Santaland is not just another movie about Santa or Christmas. This is a story about creation. This is a story of Him… The story of the world for humanity. For humanity’s sake…

Nearly twenty years ago I wrote and directed live Santa-shows that took the “real white beard” legend to about a quarter of a million kids so far. Then, when you meet a dying child, whose last wish is to meet Santa… when you see Santa just holding the child’s hand on his deathbed, because he is powerless to do anything else… you reevaluate everything.

What gift can you give a child whose only wish is to be alive at Christmas??? It was then, for the first time in my life, that I looked around really deeply and saw the suffering of millions of children. Not just those dying, but the starving, the abused. The list of missing children is goes on with no end…

So I needed a world that was able to change all this. Which not only fights against suffering, but also offers solutions. But what I found in SantaLand is much, much more than I ever dreamed. The main purpose of Santa is not to deliver gifts at Christmas but to uplift the world through the pure souls of children. While the story has everything we expect in a real heartwarming Christmas movie — and that is the first impression the film will make — it will soon take a new direction and take the audience into a world they do not necessarily expect. What triggers hatred, anger and oppression? Why does an innocent child later become an evil, oppressive adult? Is this an instinct? Is it biological? Do we learn or inherit this? For the answer, we go down to the origin of our creation, long before the age of Atlantis.

I want to make a movie that the audience wants to see again and again. It is to make them laugh and delight while dictating an exciting, tense pace, twists, and leaving you thinking in the end. It is to captivate and integrate into the subconscious, because it carries to a high degree the essence that the viewer's soul desires more than anything: fulfillment, finding home, peace.

SantaLand is a multi-threaded story and features dozens of particularly diverse characters that cannot help but turbo-charge the Christmas merchandising market. The very first episode in itself merely lays the groundwork for an all-encompassing creation story, a gigantic epic that approaches the current functioning of the world and the story of our origin from a completely different perspective than we all believe.

In the first frames I want the viewer to be sucked into the film. Flying with an invisible sleigh between the most beautiful snowy landscapes in the world takes them down to the subconscious, like hypnosis. We combine the best of technological possibilities, CGI and traditional modeling, robotics—in the creation of the reindeer, for example—to achieve perfectly lifelike effects to meet the highest expectations. I see the dynamics and charm of the film not primarily in the hasty sequences of images, but in the content and beauty of the image and its power in the professional play of the carefully selected, prepared actors and actresses and the chemistry between them. The same holds for the monumental music. The melodies and brand new songs are extremely important elements and the main pillars of an already strong story, which takes place in magical and beautiful winter locations and great cities.

The purpose of SantaLand is to somehow reach as many people as possible. This is because the film has an elusive, inexplicable effect, a powerful healing power that the world needs. It aims to awaken consciousness and to heal so that the audience can gain strength and find faith and hope. Together we are to share laughter, pleasure, blessings, goals, power and carefree joy. This story is for them, it is made for them, wherever they live, whatever skin color and identity. For all those who are vulnerable, orphans, victims, the abused, ridden, sad, or heavily ill. And it speaks to all who can act to lift them up. This story is for the world and is a call for collaboration.

If you could ask Santa for something… anything… what would you ask for?