{"id":23953,"date":"2024-06-02T19:39:31","date_gmt":"2024-06-02T23:39:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cinemadailyus.com\/?p=23953"},"modified":"2024-06-03T01:22:57","modified_gmt":"2024-06-03T05:22:57","slug":"award-winning-film-agent-of-happiness-set-for-north-american-theatrical-release","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cinemadailyus.com\/?p=23953","title":{"rendered":"Award-winning Film ‘Agent of Happiness’ Set for North American Theatrical Release"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

\u00a9Courtesy of BNB Films\/Match Frame Production<\/p>\r\n

Agent of Happiness<\/strong><\/em><\/a>, a documentary about the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan that debuted at Sundance, will be released in North America later this year by Film Movement<\/a>. Cinephil<\/a> has licensed the rights to agents in the United Kingdom and most of Europe as well as Australia, New Zealand, and several Asian countries.

Directed by Arun Bhattarai<\/a> and Dorottya Zurb\u00f3<\/a>, the film has vaulted to the top of the charts at various festivals. It was a Grand Jury Prize at Sundance and captured audience awards at the San Francisco International Film Festival and the Margaret Mead Film Festival in New York.

Bhutan claims happiness as its primary resource and to that end has established a Ministry of Gross National Happiness charged with creating a five-year plan to increase its Happiness Index. The film follows two Happiness Agents, Amber and Gurung, as they crisscross the kingdom to discover just how happy its inhabitants are and to suggest improvements.<\/p>\r\n

<\/ins>\u00a0

News of the theatrical release was announced by Film Movement\u2019s president Michael Rosenberg and Cinephil\u2019s co-director Shoshi Korman, who declared. \u201cThere\u2019s never been a better time to distribute a documentary about happiness. And aside from opening a fascinating window into life in isolated Bhutan, Arun and Dorottya have crafted a heart-warming, multi-layered exploration into the very nature of fulfillment.\u201d

As part of their inquiry, Amber and Gurung are portrayed asking 148 questions to residents of the mountain kingdom, such as \u201chow many goats to you have?\u201d, \u201cdo you feel selfish, jealous, or angry\u201d, and \u201chow often do you meditate?\u201d The results of their surveys are tabulated on a scale from 0 to 10.

Bhutan got into its \u201cpursuit of happiness\u201d mentality back in the 1970s when King Jigme Singye Wangchuck declared that the nation\u2019s \u201cgross national happiness is more important than gross domestic product.\u201d His move was seen as a strategy to preserve Bhutan\u2019s identity and spiritual heritage as it transitioned from isolation to membership in the wider global community.

Though some critics do not believe that an elusive concept like happiness can be measured, there are now scholars around the world who are seriously studying the metrics involved with such an effort. In Bhutan\u2019s most recent Gross National Happiness survey in 2022, 9.5% of its people were categorized as \u201cdeeply happy,\u201d 38.6% percent were \u201cextensively happy,\u201d 45.5% were \u201cnarrowly happy,\u201d and 6.4% percent were \u201cunhappy.\u201d

Arun Bhattarai, one of the filmmakers, has been quoted as saying: “More than the survey itself, the act of happiness agents knocking on people’s doors and coming into their homes, asking if they were happy or not \u2013 it made people feel cared for by the government. There were a lot of people who were waiting to pour their heart out to somebody,” he added, “and Amber was a very good listener.”<\/p>\r\n

Check out more of Edward’s articles<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n<\/ins>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a9Courtesy of BNB Films\/Match Frame Production Agent of Happiness, a documentary about the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan that debuted at Sundance, will be released in North America later this year by Film Movement. Cinephil has licensed the rights to agents in the United Kingdom and most of Europe as well as Australia, New Zealand, and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":24036,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[22472,22475,22473,22474,22476,13393,22478,7247,36,22477],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n'Agent of Happiness' Focuses on Satisfaction, Well-Being in Bhutan<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Amber, a happiness agent, travels the Bhutanese Himalayas surveying people's happiness, on his journey, he searches for fulfillment.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/cinemadailyus.com\/?p=23953\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta 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