Joie Botkin

Joie Botkin works behind the camera, and if you have spent enough Decembers on the sofa, you have watched her direct. Since 2017 she has put up 30 films, and the math tells you exactly where she lives: 16 of them are Christmas titles, and 15 drop you into a small town in the dead of winter. This is not a director who reaches for the strange. She shoots conventional Hallmark squarely and lets the warmth do the work. Her strongest outing is Project Christmas Wish from 2020, which at 6.9 sits just ahead of Her Pen Pal and the earlier Miss Christmas. The whole run averages a steady 6.2, which is about right for someone this dependable. If a holiday movie looked handsome and went down easy, there is a real chance she was the one calling the shots.