Gross National Happiness
TFI Suppport
TFI Network 2020
Logline
Amar (40) and Gunaraj (36) are not only close friends but also “Happiness Agents”, who work together for Bhutan’s Ministry of Happiness. They travel door-to-door measuring people’s level of happiness among the remote Himalayan mountains - and in their mission, learn about people’s dreams and life goals. GROSS NATIONAL HAPPINESS is a satirical ‘road movie’ that takes us through a mosaic of stories exploring the real desires of a society with a specific national identity - an identity created by the Happiness Ministry of Bhutan, a country that has been closed-off for centuries.
Arun Bhattarai
Director
Arun Bhattarai’s first feature length documentary The Next Guardian premiered at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) in 2017. It has since been screened at major festivals, had theatrical releases and broadcasted around the world. The film was developed in several international workshops and pitching forums (IDFAcademy Summer School, Dare to Dream, TokyoDocs, AIDC etc). The film was supported by the IDFA Bertha Fund, The Bhutan Film Trust and the Creative Europe Media Fund.
Dorottya Zurbó
Director
Dorottya Zurbó (b. 1988, Budapest) premiered her first feature-length documentary, THE NEXT GUARDIAN (co-director), at IDFA at the First Appearance Competition in 2017. The film is an intimate portrait of a family who struggles with generational conflicts in the isolated Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan. The film has screened at more than 40 international festivals (such as True/False, Ambulante, San Francisco IDFF, MoMA DocFortnight, Camerimage, and Docs Against Gravity), was released in theaters and was broadcast around the world. The film was also shown in many remote villages inside Bhutan through a traveling cinema initiative, which allowed young audiences to experience documentary cinema for the first time.
Noémi Veronika Szakonyi
Producer
Noemi Veronika Szakonyi is a freelance film director and producer. She graduated from the documentary directing MA course at the University of Theatre and Film Arts Budapest. Since then, she has focused on documentaries and short films produced by her company Match Frame Productions. Her films have been supported by HBO Europe, Creative Europe Media, and the Hungarian Film Institute. As a director, she is working on her first feature documentary, AFTERGLOW, which received the EDP Development Award and the HBO Co-Production Award.