AREN’T YOU HAPPY? (GER, 2019, 80 min)
A girl roams through the city looking for a place to sleep. Along the way she meets young mothers who celebrate motherhood religiously, goes home with an abstinent existentialist for whom sex is “just another market,” and waits for the end of capitalism in a drag bar. Her attempt to write a book doesn’t make it beyond the first sentence of the second chapter, and she finds no space between art galleries, yoga studios and the beds of strangers. Instead of trying to fit in, she starts regarding her depression as a political issue. Through 15 of the girl’s humorous encounters, Aren’t You Happy? explores our post-modern society between precarity and self-marketing, serial monogamy and neo-spirituality, disillusionment and the pressure to be happy. Susanne Heinrich’s debut film brings together pop and theory, feminism and humour, and gives you tons of quotes you’ll want to see on advertising billboards in neon letters.

ABOUT
Susanne Heinrich (b. 1985) is a German writer and director known for her debut film Das melancholische Mädchen (Aren’t You Happy?), which won the Max Ophüls Prize in 2019. Originally a novelist, she later studied directing at the German Film and Television Academy Berlin. She also performs as a musician and is currently working on her second feature film, The Miserable Mother.