Skip to main content
happiness film image; hands interacting with a mobile phone streaming a video

happiness

North American Premiere

As the unfolding genocide in Gaza is streamed around the world, resistence persists for a group of activists and immigrants in Amsterdam sabotaged by insomnia.

Director
Credits
Country of Origin

Netherlands/Turkey

Year

2025

Language

English

Film Contact
Links
18+
18 min
Experimental & Avant Garde Human Rights & Social Justice Shorts
Image Acts

Credits & Director

Screenwriter

Fırat Yücel, Aylin Kuryel

Editor

Fırat Yücel

Original Music

Metin Bozkurt

Fırat Yücel headshot

Fırat Yücel

Firat Yücel is a documentary producer and editor who lives and works in Amsterdam and Istanbul. He curates the video series Altyazı Fasikül: Free Cinema, a part of the Altyazı Cinema Association, which is dedicated to supporting political film and video makers at risk in Turkey and elsewhere. His work centers around collective filmmaking and resistance against censorship, while his documentaries focus on topics like exile, surveillance, and the right to the city, taking forms that include video essays, desktop documentaries, and biopics, among others. Yücel is part of the BAK Cell, Utrecht, in the Fellowship for Situated Practice.

 

Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre

Agatha's Almanac

Dir. Amalie Atkins
86 min

Shot over six years on vibrant 16mm film, Agatha’s Almanac is an artful documentary portrait of filmmaker Amalie Atkin’s octogenarian aunt, who has fashioned herself an endearingly simple and self-sustaining lifestyle on her Manitoba farm.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

Calle Málaga

Dir. Maryam Touzani
116 min

Seventy-nine-year-old María Ángeles lives independently in Tangier's Spanish quarter. When her daughter pressures her into selling her apartment, she refuses to give in, finding in her old age a new resilience and an unexpected romantic connection.

VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

The Art of Adventure

Dir. Alison Reid
90 min

The unbelievable adventure story of how painter Robert Bateman and ecologist Bristol Foster drove a Land Rover from Africa to Australia in 1957, developing a love of nature to last a lifetime. An inspirational love letter to the adventure of life itself.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

The Blue Trail

Dir. Gabriel Mascaro
86 min

77-year-old Tereza makes a break for the Brazilian jungle in this trippy septuagenarian fantasy, the latest from Brazilian director Gabriel Mascaro is a quirky picaresque, lushly photographed and filled with mordant humour.

VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

Follies

Dir. Eric K. Boulianne
101 min

After two kids and 16 years of marriage, François and Julie decide to open up their relationship in a bid to rekindle their dwindling sex life. A painfully hilarious and brutally honest depiction of love, sex, and intimacy in the age of the internet.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

Castration Movie Anthology 1: Traps

Dir. Louise Weard
275 min

Louise Weard's underground movie is a talk-a-thon in two chapters and four hours: a sex worker contemplates having her testicles removed, and a movie production assistant pitches himself right out of a job, and other misadventures in Vancouver life.

VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre