Director: Nick Waterman
How to Make Gravy is a 2024 Australian drama that expands one of the country's best-loved Christmas songs into a full feature. Set in the days leading up to the holiday, it follows an incarcerated man determined to shape a family celebration he already knows he will spend behind bars.
What is How to Make Gravy about?
The action gathers over the final week before Christmas. A man serving a prison sentence turns his attention away from his own situation and toward the gathering he is about to miss, and the empty seat he will leave at the family table. Working through letters and phone calls, he tries to steer the day from a distance: deciding who should take on which task, how the hours should be paced, and, above all, passing on the precise method for the gravy that has anchored the family meal for years. As the twenty-fifth draws closer, long-standing frictions between siblings, unfinished conversations, and the plain logistics of feeding a large household all rise to the surface. What begins as a set of practical instructions gradually becomes a way for one absent person to stay present.
Cast & crew
The film rests on an Australian ensemble. At its centre is the brother whose narrated letter frames the whole story, and around him a wide cast fills out three generations of one family: siblings and their partners, in-laws, and children, each arriving at the holiday with a different mood. Several established Australian screen performers take supporting parts, lending weight to the film's quieter domestic exchanges.
Context & significance
The screenplay draws on a 1996 song by a celebrated Australian singer-songwriter, a track narrated as a letter from a prisoner named Joe to his brother Dan. Over the decades it became a fixture of the Australian Christmas season, and this 2024 feature is its first expansion into narrative cinema. Running roughly two hours and classed as a drama, the production keeps the song's original December setting and its focus on family, distance, and the small rituals that hold a household together. It was made in Australia and released in 2024.
Where & how to watch
How to Make Gravy is available to stream on K-Time. The page you are reading is free to browse, while playback opens once you sign in with a K-Time account. A Persian dub is provided for viewers who prefer to watch in Farsi, and the K-Time interface is built for Persian-speaking audiences across the diaspora.