Los que se quedan
The holdover Christmas drama nobody expected to work — but does.
What you're actually watching
Los que se quedan — that's the Spanish-language title for Alexander Payne's The Holdovers in Latin American cinemas — is set at Barton Academy, a fictional New England prep school in December 1970, right after most students have left for Christmas break. Paul Giamatti plays Paul Hunham, a classics teacher so acerbic and unbending that even his colleagues avoid him in the faculty lounge. He's stuck supervising the handful of students whose families aren't picking them up: kids with nowhere else to go. One of them is Angus Tully (Dominic Sessa), sharp and brittle, carrying damage he doesn't advertise. Then there's Mary Lamb (Da'Vine Joy Randolph), the school's cook, grieving her son who died in Vietnam.
Three people. One empty building. Two weeks with nothing to do but sit in the cold.
It's not a heartwarming Christmas movie. It's something quieter and much harder to shake.
The film's bones — production, runtime, and that Oscar haul
Payne wrote the screenplay with David Hemingson and shot it with a grainy, warm texture that deliberately echoes early-1970s cinema — the opening Universal logo even looks vintage. The whole thing runs 133 minutes, which sounds long until you realize you don't feel it. Focus Features and Universal released it limited on October 27, 2023, then wide on November 10.
The awards attention was substantial. Da'Vine Joy Randolph won Best Supporting Actress at the 2024 Oscars — a win that felt inevitable the moment you see her sit alone in that kitchen, just existing with her grief. The film pulled five Oscar nominations total: Best Picture, Best Director (Payne), Best Actor (Giamatti), Best Cinematography, and Best Original Score. Sessa, making his feature debut, got critical raves everywhere except the Oscar ballot, which remains one of that year's weirder oversights.
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Why the performances stick with you
What's striking is how much Payne trusts these actors to not explain themselves. Giamatti builds Hunham as a man who's constructed an entire personality out of condescension — a fortress. You spend the opening twenty minutes actively disliking him, which is exactly the point. He's someone who pushed everyone away so thoroughly that nobody's left.
Randolph is the film's emotional center, though. I keep coming back to the scene where Mary sits alone in the school kitchen, silence doing more work than any dialogue could. Her grief isn't performed. It just occupies the space she's in. Sessa — and I can't stress this enough for a debut — finds the fractures in Angus without signaling them. Vulnerability surfaces slowly, almost against the character's will.
Spanish-language critics have been consistently enthusiastic. Decine21 rates it 8/10 (8.6/10 from users), the kind of sustained word-of-mouth that builds around films refusing to oversell themselves. The cinematography by Eigil Bryld has this textured, slightly faded quality. Mark Orton's score reinforces the period without ever becoming costume-drama distraction. This uses the past to say something about right now.
Where to stream it — and when
Los que se quedan is on major streaming platforms, though availability shifts by region and month. The quickest way to check your specific country? Use the where-to-watch widget above or visit Movie OTT — they aggregate live data across subscription services so you're not toggling between five apps. Streaming rights for international releases change constantly (especially across Latin America and Spain), so real-time tracking actually matters here.
This is the kind of film that deserves a proper sit-down with the lights off — not background noise while you scroll.
Is it worth your time?
If you liked Sideways or Nebraska, you already know Payne's wavelength. If you think Christmas movies are either too saccharine or too cynical, this one splits that difference without feeling compromised. It's not a feel-good film. It's a feel-real one.
Character-driven drama works best when you don't know what the next scene demands of you — and here, Payne just lets you sit with these three people for two hours and watch something shift inside them. Nobody announces their growth. Nobody delivers an epiphany speech. They just change, the way real people do when they're forced to stay still long enough to see each other clearly.
Release date: October 27, 2023 (limited); November 10, 2023 (wide)
Runtime: 133 minutes
Rating: Not rated
Streaming: Check Movie OTT for your region
Watch it. Then watch it again in December.
