From acclaimed director Alexander Payne (Sideways), The Holdovers, which is set in th 1970s, follows a curmudgeonly instructor (Paul Giamatti) at a prestigious American school who is forced to remain on campus during Christmas break to babysit the handful of students with nowhere to go. Eventually he forms an unlikely bond with one of them - a damaged, brainy troublemaker (newcomer Dominic Sessa) - and with the school’s head cook, who has just lost a son in Vietnam (Da’Vine Joy Randolph).
Awards season contender