The Happy Film

Premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival 2016, The Happy Film is a feature-length documentary in which graphic designer Stefan Sagmeister undergoes a series of self-experiments outlined by popular psychology to test once and for all if it’s possible for a person to have a meaningful impact on their own happiness.

Austrian graphic designer Stefan Sagmeister is doing well. He lives in New York, the city of his dreams, and he has success in his work, designing album covers for the Rolling Stones, Jay-Z and the Talking Heads. But in the back of his mind he suspects there must be something more. He decides to turn himself into a design project. Can he redesign his personality to become a better person? Is it possible to train his mind to get happier? He pursues 3 controlled experiments of meditation, therapy, and drugs, grading himself along the way. But real life creeps in and confounds the process: art, sex, love, and death prove impossible to disentangle. His unique designs and painfully personal experiences mark a journey that travels closer to himself than ever intended.

The Happy Film
Direction: Stefan Sagmeister, Ben Nabors, Hillman Curtis
Production: Ben Nabors
Cinematography: Ben Wolf
Editor: Sam Citron and Akiko Iwakawa-Grieve
Music: Colin Huebert
Format: Documentary, 95 min
Years of Production: 2009-2016