Directed by Arnaud Robert, Paolo Woods • Documentary • 2022 • 94 minutes
The universal quest for happiness is one of the human invariants. The pharmaceutical industry is developing entire classes of drugs (anxiolytics, antidepressants, sleeping pills, opioids) that promise their consumers, if not happiness, at least some peace.
HAPPY PILLS explores the industrial response to an existential quest and our intimate relationship to drugs. In Switzerland, Israel, France, Peru, Niger or the United States, the documentary follows six characters who each need chemistry to lead what they see as a better life. In the end, it is our consumer society and the Eldorado of prescription joy that HAPPY PILLS questions.
Up Next in Health & Wellness
-
Drunk on Too Much Life
Directed by Michelle Melles • Documentary • 2021 • 77 minutes
Drunk on Too Much Life is an intimate and powerful documentary following the filmmaker's 21-year-old daughter’s mind-opening journey from locked-down psych wards and diagnostic labels towards expansive worlds of creativity, connection...
-
It Is Not Over Yet
Directed by Louise Detlefsen • Documentary • 2021 • 94 minutes
At the small retirement home Dagmarsminde, the founding nurse May Bjerre Eiby has no interest in specific dementia diagnoses or medicine, since neither is improving the quality of life for the 11 residents. Instead, May and her staff...
-
The Story of Looking (Mark Cousins)
Directed by Mark Cousins • Documentary • 2021 • 87 minutes
On the day before an operation to save his eyesight, filmmaker Mark Cousins explores what looking means to him, and the role our visual experience plays in our individual and collective lives. In a deeply personal meditation on the power...
