The Happiness Effect

Skopje Remixed

An omnibus of ten short films by ten young directors.

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A young boy from Skopje is trying to find a way out of life by using the internet... The communication he wants to achieve with the outside world, via the internet, is just a reluctant excuse of the young man, who wants to hide from his disturbed senses his isolation from people, his helplessness and fear that he will never be able to establish communication with them again....

Encounter

A story about the encounter of two middle-aged friends.

Aleph

Young married couple are moving in a new flat. They try to drop everyday monotony by buying a magic box which introduces them to tv-simulacrum.

The Portrait of the Young Artist in the 21st Century

Through the prism of his own local position, the young artist views the circumstances, conditions, and rules of the game — how to become a successful artist.

Haiku 2: Paper Dragon

Short avant-garde video.

Haiku 3: Long Days

Short avant-garde video.

Haiku 1: Sea Spring

Short avant-garde video.

Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears

Living together in a workers' dorm, Katerina and her friends are determined to make it in Moscow. But when a boorish cameraman forces himself on her, Katerina finds herself pregnant and alone as her friends move on. Twenty years later, Katerina is a factory director, outpacing her old roommates career-wise, yet still alone but for her daughter. Love seems possible again when she meets a genial mechanic.

Moscow, Belgium

‘Moscou’ is a densely populated working class neighbourhood on the outskirts of Ghent, Belgium. Matty, mother of three, bumps her car into a truck on the parking lot of a supermarket. Johnny climbs down from the cabin. He is infuriated by the dent in his front bumper and yells at Matty. Although impressed by the accident, Matty fights back with sharp words. Their discussion turns into a row, and the police have to intervene. Matty goes home, the trunk of her car dancing up and down. Back in her apartment, Matty takes a hot bath to recover from the afternoon’s emotionswhen the phone rings. It’s Johnny, apologizing for his behaviour on the parking lot. Matty tells him to stay out of her life. A dramatic comedy begins about a woman whose soul is full of dents and bruises.

Pollyanna

A young girl comes to an embittered town and confronts its attitude with her determination to see the best in life.

A Story of Yonosuke

The year is 1987 and Japan is just reaching the peak of its economic success. Eighteen-year old Yonosuke Yokomichi arrives in Tokyo from Nagasaki. Ordinary in every way possible, he lives in a suburb far from the excitement of the big city and commutes to a university in the center of Tokyo.

Hector and the Search for Happiness

Hector is a quirky psychiatrist who has become increasingly tired of his humdrum life. As he tells his girlfriend, Clara, he feels like a fraud: he hasn’t really tasted life, and yet he’s offering advice to patients who are just not getting any happier. So Hector decides to break out of his deluded and routine driven life. Armed with buckets of courage and child-like curiosity, he embarks on a global quest in hopes of uncovering the elusive secret formula for true happiness. And so begins a larger than life adventure with riotously funny results.

The Art of Happiness

Sergio driving a taxi in a white Naples overflowing sadness and garbage. Pouring rain leads her clients through the city trying to process the death of his brother, who started ten years earlier for Tibet and never returned. A pop singer, a recycler of fragments of life, a radio announcer, an old uncle, alternate seats on its bearing, each in its own way, a trace of his brother loved. Stubborn not to go over and get lost in an endless race, Sergio is overwhelmed by memories and the music produced in pairs with Alfredo, which in Buddhism and in its foundations had found the strength to cope with the disease. Those notes that he believed buried and laid to always return overbearing and demanding a soundboard that resonate and express his being sound. Putting his hand on the piano, Sergio Alfredo feel again, giving the past with the present and realizing itself in the feeling.