Six Degrees of Celebration

Yolki (Six Degrees of Celebration, 2010) is a Russian holiday comedy you can watch online on iFILM, directed by a team of six filmmakers including Timur Bekmambetov and Alexander Voitinsky, with Ivan Urgant, Sergei Svetlakov, Vera Brezhneva and Sergei Garmash leading the cast.

On New Year's Eve, eleven Russian cities go chaotic at once — from Kaliningrad on the Baltic to Yakutsk in Siberia. A cab driver, a pop star, a snowboarder, a retired woman, a thief and a firefighter all hit some kind of wall at the same time. The six-degrees-of-separation theory ties their stories together: a chain of strangers stretching across the country ends up delivering a small miracle.

Released at a time when Russian holiday cinema was still finding its footing, the film set a template for the multi-story New Year format that dozens of sequels would follow. If you want something cheerful and low-stakes for a festive night, it delivers exactly that. Stream Yolki (2010) online on iFILM.