13-23 nov 2025
EN/NL
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happiness
Program
happiness

happiness

Firat Yücel
Netherlands
2025
18 min
Dutch Premiere
Best of Fests
Synopsis

One sleeps poorly these days—too much blue light, people say. Maybe they’re right: 16 hours a day staring at screens, monitoring all social media and group chats, seeing messages from Palestine, Congo, Kurdistan, Sudan, Lebanon... Is it the blue light that keeps sleep away, or the relentless misery witnessed on the screen—and the restless urge to join the collective struggle against it? How can one sleep in times of genocide? This desktop documentary intersperses journal-style texts with videos and social media posts, as well as the results of a web search for solutions to sleep problems.

Instead of looking at a screen, one tries to look out the window. But the streets of Amsterdam offer no relief: mounted riot police are on their way to forcibly break up protests. Happiness reflects on a world where everything feels increasingly interconnected, while our ability to influence it all is steadily declining.

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Credits
18 min
color
DCP
Spoken languages: English, Turkish, Dutch, Serbian, Arabic
Director
    Firat Yücel
    Firat Yücel
Production
    Aylin Kuryel for Image Acts,
    Firat Yücel for Image Acts
    Aylin Kuryel for Image Acts,
    Firat Yücel for Image Acts
Cinematography
    Firat Yücel
    Firat Yücel
Editing
    Firat Yücel
    Firat Yücel
Sound
    Firat Yücel
    Firat Yücel
Sound Design
    Metin Bozkurt
    Metin Bozkurt
World Sales
    Kino Rebelde
    Kino Rebelde
Screening copy
    Firat Yücel
    Firat Yücel

Stills

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