Agent of Happiness
Essential Documentaries
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1h 33m
Directed by Arun Bhattarai and Dorottya Zurbó | 93 mins | 2024
How do you measure joy? For Bhutan—a nation that conceptualized a “gross national happiness" in 1972 and has collected data on its citizens’ satisfaction for almost two decades—the answer might just be mathematical. But the truth is hardly ever so simple, as the two Bhutanese census workers at the heart of this gentle travelogue come to learn. The pair journey through their country’s verdant pastures and alpine landscapes, polling a cross-section of residents to assign each a happiness score. What begins as a numerical exercise soon becomes a poetic patchwork of daily life and its discontents.
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