Sentimental, a little dark, but enormously heartwarming, it’s not Christmas until a bell rings in Bedford Falls.

Can you believe it's 80 years old? We screen this film every year because we love it! It's A Wonderful Life is one of the most popular and heartwarming films ever made, but made with an unflinching eye. Jimmy Stewart is the owner of a money lending company that for years has been helping people in his town live their dreams.

But when one Christmas he has one calamity after another, he decides to take his own life, believing everyone would be better off if he had never lived. A heavenly messenger (Henry Travers) arrives to show him a vision: what the world would have been like if George had never been born.

“It’s only because this modern parable plumbs the depths so vividly that its vision of redemption proves so persuasive… a telling message of solace in a secular capitalist society.” The BFI