‘The Holdovers’ trailer: Alexander Payne reteams with Paul Giamatti for wintry heart-warmer

Alexander Payne’s new film, ‘The Holdovers’, follows a grouchy prep school teacher babysitting a bunch of stay-behind students during the winter break

Alexander Payne, director of acclaimed films like Sideways (2004), The Descendants (2011) and Nebraska (2013), is back with a new film about a grouchy prep school teacher babysitting a bunch of stay-behind students during the winter break.

Titled The Holdovers, the film stars Paul Giamatti in the role of the much-disliked teacher. Payne and Giamatti had last collaborated twenty years ago in the comedy-drama Sideways.

According to a synopsis, The Holdovers follows a curmudgeonly instructor (Paul Giamatti) at a New England prep 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 (Da’Vine Joy Randolph), who has just lost a son in Vietnam.

Payne’s last directorial was the sci-fi comedy Downsizing in 2017.

The Holdovers is produced by Miramax and Gran Via Productions and distributed by Focus Features. It premieres in a limited capacity in the United States on November 10, followed by a wider release on November 22.