Happy Holidays From The Alamo

The card, in true Alamo style, is based on the Fantastic Fest hit Rare Exports, a Finnish film about the capture of Santa Claus. Here’s the synopsis the Alamo site has:

Way up north in Finland, right on the border with Russia, lies one of Santa Claus’s ostensible homes. For the last couple of months an international team of “archaeologists,” working for Subzero Inc. and led by a weird Brit (who bears an unsettling resemblance to the Nazi officer in RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK), has been mysteriously digging away at a large hill, wreaking havoc on the environment.

The locals, mostly Samis and Laplanders, are furious. The annual reindeer round-up, which happens a few days before Christmas, has been ruined, dealing a devastating blow to the local economy. Especially annoyed is Rauno, a single father who’s struggling to make ends meet and deal with his imaginative, physically underdeveloped son Pietari. Though he doesn’t totally fit in with the community, Pietari is insatiably curious and notices things that others don’t. Specifically, he’s realized that the dig is somehow related to Santa Claus, but this isn’t exactly the Santa from animated Christmas specials or nineteenthcentury American doggerel. This Santa is, to put it mildly, a little harsher.

The film was such an Alamo fave that there was a photo opportunity at the South Lamar theater where patrons could have their pics taken with a caged Santa. You can check out some of those photos here.

After the picture with me in it check out one of the short films that turned into Rare Exports; the film is playing at select theaters now and Oscilloscope will be bringing it to home video soon.