In difficult times, we need stories more than ever. Not because they distract us but because, as Will Storr reminds us, stories shape our reality. They tell us who we are, what matters, and what’s possible. The right story can give us courage. It can widen our imagination. It can help us overcome our demons and our sense that nothing can change. 

So we asked two people who spend their lives thinking about hope, purpose and human potential to share the films they return to when they need to remember what’s true: Adam Penny, CEO of The Beautiful Truth, and Sarah Gillard, CEO of A Blueprint for Better Business. These aren’t just “feel-good movies”. They’re stories about agency, moral courage, compassion, resilience and the indomitable human spirit. Here are their ten. 

1. It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)

An angel is sent from Heaven to help a desperately frustrated businessman see the value of his own life.

Suggested by Adam

There are many reasons this film sits at the top of my list, so many that I still find myself in tears from the very beginning. It’s a Wonderful Life captures something profoundly human: the way we can live faithfully, doing good for others again and again, without ever really seeing the impact of our lives. George Bailey is a man rooted in one place, watching others come and go, advance, move on. Meanwhile, he’s held back by responsibilities, crises and the needs of his community. That tension, wanting to step into something bigger but being continually called back to serve, is something I relate to deeply after running a company for 23 years. 

What always gets me is George’s devotion, his instinct to help people regardless of cost. He keeps saving others, often without noticing what that adds up to. And then the miracle of the film: Clarence showing him the truth that he could never see for himself. The idea that the ordinary, the small acts, the unseen sacrifices, these are the things that actually hold the world together. When the people he once helped return to rescue him, it’s as if the whole film gently whispers, “None of this has been wasted.” 

This is a story that reminds me that change rarely happens in grand gestures. It happens in the small things, the unnoticed things, the staying-put things. It’s hopeful because it affirms that what we do matters, even when we cannot see it. 

Sarah adds: Right at the beginning, when Clarence goes to see him, he basically says it’s because he’s a man discouraged and there’s nothing worse. That gets me every time, because the only way you’re able to make any change in the world is if you’ve got some kind of internal fire. I’ve never really thought of discouraged as the opposite of courage, but that’s what it is. You lose that and you lose everything. 

2. Up (2009) 

A widower travels to South America in his house equipped with balloons, inadvertently taking a young stowaway.

Suggested by Sarah

I absolutely love Up. I love its gentleness, its warmth, its honesty. At its centre is a grumpy old man whose entire world has fallen apart. He’s lost the love of his life, he’s being evicted from his house, and everything feels like it’s closing in. And yet, instead of giving up, he ties thousands of balloons to his house and decides to shape a different future. That spark, “I can shape my circumstances, however dire they look”, is the heartbeat of the film. 

It’s beautifully human. The silent montage of Carl and Ellie’s life together is one of the most moving sequences in cinema. Then comes the adventure: the boy, the dog, the journey none of them expected. What begins as escape turns into connection, healing and renewal. Carl is dragged, very reluctantly, back into joy. Back into relationship. Back into remembering that life can begin again, even after disaster and loss. 

The moment that undoes me is the revelation at the end of the scrapbook. Carl believes he’s failed Ellie because they never got to fulfil the big dream they imagined together. But then he turns the page and discovers she’s written: “Thanks for the adventure, now go have another one.” That line is all agency. All permission. All hope. It says: your story isn’t finished. Life can change. You can change. Even grief can be the beginning of something unexpected. 

It’s a redemptive, joyful, deeply human film. And yes, the music makes me cry every single time. 

Adam adds: For me, it’s that sense of escaping inevitability. At that age, when your wife’s died, it’s easy to think, ‘Well, that’s the end of the story, then.’ Up says you can still choose. You’re not just waiting for the end; you still have agency. 

3. Moana (2016) 

A young sailor defies destiny to save her island.

Suggested by Adam

Moana is, to me, a perfect voyage-of-self-discovery story. It’s about crossing oceans, inside and out, to discover who you really are. I love it because it echoes one of the deepest human questions: Who am I, really, and what am I capable of? 

There’s a moment in Buddhist tradition just before enlightenment where the Buddha is challenged by demons who say, “Who are you to think you can become enlightened?” He touches the earth and says, in effect, “This is who I am.” That gesture of identity, courage and calling is mirrored beautifully in Moana’s own declaration: “I am Moana.” It’s a moment of clarity and defiance. A line drawn. A refusal to be defined by fear or limitation. Every time that music plays, I feel it in my chest. 

Then comes the twist: the monster she’s been fighting isn’t a monster at all. She’s a land spirit who’s lost her heart. That revelation feels deeply true to human life. So often, the “enemy” isn’t evil; it’s pain. It’s disconnection. The instant Moana restores the heart, everything shifts, not through violence but through compassion. That’s a message I return to a lot in my work: the things that look like enemies often just need to be reminded of their heart. 

Between the self-discovery and the healing, Moana is a film I can watch endlessly. It calls you forward. It tells you to go further than anyone has gone before. To do the thing that’s yours to do. To remember who you are. 

Sarah adds: It’s a great film. And it’s got The Rock in it. I can’t argue with that.

4. Apollo 13 (1995)

Stranded 205,000 miles from Earth in a crippled spacecraft, astronauts fight a desperate battle to survive.

Suggested by Sarah

I’ve always loved Apollo 13. It’s Tom Hanks at his finest, quiet heroism and steady courage, and it’s an extraordinary portrayal of what humans are capable of under pressure. The premise is simple: a mission to the moon goes wrong. Really wrong. What unfolds is a masterclass in teamwork, trust and the refusal to catastrophise. 

The astronauts lose their dream of landing on the moon almost immediately, but the shift from disappointment to survival is instant. What follows is one impossible problem after another. The equipment wasn’t built for what they now need. Oxygen is running out. CO₂ levels are rising. The tiniest error could kill them. Yet no one panics. They just keep working the problem in front of them. 

I love the parallel stories: the crew in the spacecraft solving things moment by moment, and the NASA teams on the ground tipping out everything that’s in the spaceship onto a table, socks, hoses, duct tape, and saying, “Right, we need to fix this with that.” It’s ingenuity at its best. And then there’s a line I use a lot. The flight controller is getting a stream of everything that’s breaking and at one point he just stops and says, “Okay. Let’s start with what’s good.” That flips the whole dynamic. It stops the panic and moves everyone into problem-solving. 

This film isn’t really about space. It’s about agency. It’s about choosing not to be overwhelmed. It’s about trusting the people beside you. It’s about believing that however bad things look, there is always one more step, one more possibility, one more creative solution. 

And yes, everyone survives, against all the odds. 

Adam adds: I’ve only seen it once, back in the 90s, but I still remember that sense that they were never going to make it, and somehow they do. I really want to watch it again.

5. Bridge of Spies (2015) 

In the shadow of war, one man showed the world what we stood for.

Suggested by Adam

I think Bridge of Spies is one of the most visually and morally beautiful films Spielberg has made. It feels like an homage to a certain kind of 1950s America, not the sugary version, but the principled one, the America that believed in things like justice, fairness and due process. Tom Hanks carries that so well. 

The story centres on a captured Russian spy. Everyone knows he’s a spy. Everyone wants him executed. They ask Tom Hanks’ character, a lawyer, to represent him, expecting a show trial. He refuses to play along. He says, in effect, “No. If we stand for anything, we stand for innocent until proven guilty. You don’t just get to say he’s a Russian spy and skip the principles.” He insists on treating the man as a human being, not just an enemy. And he does that while being criticised, abused and even threatened, along with his family. 

That moral courage, the courage to stand by what you believe when it costs you, moves me. He understands that justice isn’t about who is popular. It’s about the standard you uphold.
 
Halfway through, an American pilot is captured and there’s a possible exchange. Hanks goes to Berlin, to the bridge between East and West, to negotiate. Over time he builds a kind of quiet respect with the Russian spy. He keeps holding the line on his values all the way through. 

My favourite moment is on the plane home. The pilot is desperate to prove himself, saying he didn’t tell the enemy anything. Hanks’ character just says, “You know what you did.” I love that idea that you know what you did. You know what you stand for. No label or accusation can take that away. 

Sarah adds: I haven’t seen it, but as Adam was talking I just thought, ‘Imagine if Tom Hanks ever played Atticus Finch.’ It’s that kind of moral clarity.

6. Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022) 

A middle-aged Chinese immigrant travels through the cosmos trying to connect and to reconcile.

Suggested by Sarah

This is not the kind of film I usually love. It’s chaotic and multiversal and a bit overwhelming. But I’ve watched it two or three times because of one particular scene, and I’ve got the quote from that scene on my wall. 

The protagonist goes through all these different realities and in every one, her husband is there in some form. There’s a scene in an alleyway where he’s a wealthy man and she’s a film star. He basically says to her, “You think I’m weak because I choose to see the good things. But when I choose to see the positive, it’s strategic and necessary. It’s not naive. You see yourself as a fighter. This is how I fight.” And then he says something like, “The only thing I know is we must be kind, especially when we don’t know what’s going on.” 

That’s the heart of it for me. Kindness isn’t a soft, fluffy add-on. It’s a way of fighting back against chaos and meaninglessness. It’s how you choose your reality in a universe that can feel completely unmoored. 

The film is wild and inventive and sometimes bonkers, but underneath it is this very human truth: meaning comes from the world you build through your choices, your relationships and the way you respond to the mess. The googly eyes on the laundry bag, the taxes and the laundry being framed as a gift because you get to do them together, that really stays with me. 

I’ve often been called naive or idealistic in my work. This film helped me say, “No, this is a deliberate choice.” I know the situation. I choose to look for the good because that creates different outcomes. You can choose cynicism and get one reality, or choose hope and get another. 

Kindness isn’t weakness. Kindness is a way of fighting. 

Adam adds: It reminds me of that idea of hope that ‘breaks down doors’. It takes real strength to keep seeing the good when everything looks lost.

7. The West Wing (TV Series, 1999–2006) 

The triumphs and travails of White House senior staff.

Suggested by Adam

I included this because it really does function like a long-form hopeful story. I go back to The West Wing again and again, especially when I want to sleep well or when I need to remember there are still good people trying to do good things in complexity. It’s not sentimental. It’s principled. It shows politics not as a game of power for its own sake, but as a messy, demanding vocation where you’re trying to do the right thing while navigating impossible trade-offs. 

Aaron Sorkin created it as a kind of response to the political climate of the time. It’s his way of saying, “It doesn’t have to be this way.” The best defence we have is being well informed and engaged, and the show invites you into that. Even now, the dialogue is so sharp and alive. It’s fast and witty, but also thoughtful and serious. 

What I love is that the characters are genuinely trying to act from principle. They know they won’t win every battle. They know they’ll have to compromise. But they keep going. They stand for something. That’s rare now, when so many shows are about antiheroes and cynicism. 

Sarah adds: “It genuinely changed how I saw high-level politics. It made it feel possible that there could be people in power who are trying to do the right thing. The West Wing feels like a reminder that integrity and public service are still imaginable.” 

8. Hidden Figures (2016) 

The untold story of three African-American women at NASA who helped launch John Glenn into orbit.

Suggested by Sarah

Hidden Figures is an extraordinary true story. Three African-American women, Katherine Johnson, Mary Jackson and Dorothy Vaughan, are working at NASA in the early 1960s. They’re each brilliant in their field and each facing intense discrimination in a still-segregated state. Layered on top of that is the Cold War: the Soviets have put a man into orbit, American rockets keep failing, and everyone is on edge. 

What moves me is how these women respond. They could easily be bitter or full of rage, and that would be understandable. But what we see is dignity, restraint and absolute determination. Katherine Johnson’s maths is crucial to putting John Glenn into orbit. Mary Jackson fights her way into engineering school when she’s technically not allowed to attend. Dorothy Vaughan quietly teaches herself to program the new IBM computer when no one else can. Their talent pushes NASA forward, and just by doing their jobs so well, they start to change how people see them.
 
There’s a moment where one of the husbands says, “The only way we win our civil rights is to fight,” and his wife replies, “I think there is another way, and it’s the way I’m choosing.” I love that line. They’re not fighting through dominance or violence. They’re fighting through excellence and perseverance. 

It’s a very hopeful film. Courage, in this story, doesn’t shout. It looks like turning up, again and again, in a place that wasn’t built for you, and doing your work brilliantly anyway. 

Adam adds: You can hear the same pattern there: authenticity, moral courage, being yourself and sticking to your principles even when everything around you is pushing the other way.

9. Darkest Hour (2017)  

The newly appointed British prime minister must decide whether to negotiate with Hitler or fight on against incredible odds.

Suggested by Adam

I’ve watched Darkest Hour twice in the last few weeks because it speaks so clearly about hope in impossible situations. It tells the story of Churchill at the beginning of World War II, when Britain had almost no army, no ammunition and very few options. He was brought in, in some ways, because people thought he could take the blame when it all went wrong. 

What happens instead is this extraordinary act of moral courage. He’s under pressure from every direction to sign a peace deal. People are tired. The army is cornered. The enemy looks unstoppable. And he has to make this agonising decision to keep going, knowing that more people will die if he does. The film really lets you feel the weight of that. 

There’s a line I only really noticed on a second viewing. Churchill says to the King, “Countries that surrender never recover. But those that fight on, even in the face of sure obliteration, survive intact.” That’s the heart of it for me. It’s about fighting for identity and culture and freedom, even when defeat looks almost certain.
 
Dunkirk then becomes the turning point, all those civilian boats crossing the Channel to bring the soldiers home. It’s such a powerful image of collective courage. 

This film gives me hope because it shows that even in the bleakest, most hopeless moments, people sometimes choose resolve instead of surrender. They choose conviction. They keep going. 

Sarah adds: It really reminded me of that F. Scott Fitzgerald idea: the mark of a first-rate intelligence is to hold two opposing ideas in your mind, to know something is hopeless and yet be determined to make it otherwise. That’s what you see playing out in The Darkest Hour.

10. Love Actually (2003) 

The lives of eight very different couples unfold in a series of loosely interrelated tales of love during Christmas in London.

Suggested by Sarah

Cheesy? Definitely. But when you need a lift, when the world feels heavy, Love Actually really does have its own kind of magic. People hug, dance, mess things up, betray each other, forgive each other. It’s messy and sentimental and sometimes ridiculous, but underneath it is this simple truth: love pulls you through a lot of rubbish. 

The film’s power is in the tiny moments. The kid in the nativity wearing an octopus costume. Hugh Grant dancing down the stairs at Downing Street. The scenes of unspoken or unrequited love. It’s not realistic in a gritty way. It’s reassuring. It reminds you that the big stuff in life, loss and disappointment and heartbreak, is held together by small acts of kindness and silliness and grace. 

In that sense, it’s very close to It’s a Wonderful Life. The point isn’t a grand, perfect plan. It’s the overlooked moments that carry us. 

Adam adds: I agree. There’s something about the small, everyday acts of love in it. They’re imperfect and a bit chaotic, but they’re the things that actually save us.