By Daria Radler

Ah, Christ­mas! The hol­i­days are around the cor­ner, and this means a com­bi­na­tion of an incred­i­ble amount of deli­cious food (don’t we all love Grandma’s cook­ing?!) as well as presents and some qual­i­ty time with our fam­i­lies that we’ve either looked for­ward to or have secret­ly dread­ed for months. Either way, I’m sure that by now you have prob­a­bly estab­lished a lit­tle fam­i­ly tra­di­tion of your own when it comes to decid­ing on your ulti­mate Christ­mas movie selec­tion. So let’s look at a few movies that should def­i­nite­ly make your list.

1. It’s a Won­der­ful Life (1946)

George Bai­ley has spent his entire life devot­ing him­self to the peo­ple of Bed­ford Falls. Bro­ken and sui­ci­dal on Christ­mas Eve, he decides that his fam­i­ly and friends would be bet­ter off with­out him. What he doesn’t know is that they have prayed for him to get through these hard times, and that their prayers have been heard: His guardian angel Clarence falls to earth to show him how dif­fer­ent the lives of his loved ones would have been if it wasn’t for him. Heart­warm­ing­ly beau­ti­ful and deeply mov­ing, It’s a Won­der­ful Life teach­es us how much it means to look after one anoth­er – a mes­sage that makes this movie worth watch­ing over and over again.

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By Dagmar Mißfeldt

In their 2016 book, Fin­ti­aanien Mail­la, three Finnish women take read­ers on a jour­ney into unknown ter­ri­to­ry. Meeri Koutanie­mi (pho­to jour­nal­ist), Maria Sep­pälä (jour­nal­ist and doc­u­men­tary film­mak­er), and Kat­ja Ket­tu (best­selling author) intro­duce us to Find­i­ans, a group of peo­ple who prac­ti­cal­ly nobody has heard of, at least until now.

Between 1860 and 1940, approx­i­mate­ly 400,000 Finnish emi­grants left their home­land for North Amer­i­ca in search of a bet­ter life. They main­ly set­tled in Min­neso­ta, Michi­gan, and Ontario. 400,000 is an amaz­ing­ly high num­ber, espe­cial­ly when one con­sid­ers that Fin­land only had a pop­u­la­tion of about three mil­lion peo­ple in 1900. In their new home­land, the Finnish came in con­tact with the Ojib­wa peo­ple. Rel­a­tive­ly quick­ly, the indige­nous peo­ple and the Finns noticed that they had much in common:

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By Kai-Arne Zimny

It was long after mid­night. I was sit­ting in a fan­cy bar, killing time while wait­ing for my train home. I’d been at Com­ic Con in Berlin that week­end and had a free­bie with me, its pack­age promi­nent­ly fea­tur­ing the image of a clum­si­ly drawn car­toon char­ac­ter with a yel­low dog. I con­sid­ered keep­ing it in my bag, giv­en that this was some­thing you’d expect to see in the hands of a preschool­er, cer­tain­ly not in this set­ting dom­i­nat­ed by high heels, suave suits, and classy cock­tails. How­ev­er, upon sit­ting down, I proud­ly put the car­toon on the counter. Instead of tak­ing my order, the bar­keep­er set his gleam­ing eyes on the boy and his dog, smiled from ear to ear, and said only two words: Adven­ture Time.

What fol­lowed was a free whiskey for me and a pas­sion­ate dis­cus­sion about a car­toon show fea­tur­ing a twelve-year old boy named Finn and his mag­i­cal dog, Jake, who live in a can­dy king­dom. You might say this sounds like a sto­ry made for lit­tle kids. Actu­al­ly, it sounds like a sto­ry made ‘by’ lit­tle kids. But the very adult bar­keep­er told me in absolute earnest­ness that Adven­ture Time’s (2010 – 2018) final season’s finale, which he’d just seen and which had its pre­miere in Ger­many on that very day, had moved him to tears. Now why is that?

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