Aarne Juutilainen a.k.a. The Terror of Morocco: Documentary Film about a Finnish Warrior (2024)
Who was Aarne Juutilainen a.k.a. The Terror of Morocco? [Suomeksi] Aarne Juutilainen (1904 - 1976), also known as “The Terror of Morocco”, became a familiar figure to me when in 2018-23 I made a drama documentary about his life and times, the film which was based on a stage monologue written by Seppo Porvali (1950 – 2019). I supplemented this original monologue text with other biographical material about Juutilainen. Based on my own worldview, I had not previously considered myself the actual target audience for any war histories, but the more I read about and studied the life of Aarne Juutilainen, the more I began to be fascinated by the character's sudden contradictions and the very ingredients that legends and myths are made of. Whether they had anything to do with reality or not. In recent years, the figure who has interested the general public the most from the Battle of Kollaa (1939-40) has been the sniper Simo Häyhä (1905 - 2002), a.k.a. "White Death...