Bhutan, Taiwan 2023 / 107 Minutes / German version
Director: Pawo Choyning Dorji
Stars: Tandin Wangchuk, Harry Einhorn, Tandin Phubz

The whole world is suffocating in chaos and war. The whole world? No, in Bhutan, a small Buddhist kingdom in the Himalayas, all is still well with the world. Until the ruler decides to make his people happy by giving them access to the internet and television and then introducing democracy....Wonderfully entertaining satire with critical references to capitalism and globalisation.

Japan 2023 / 123 Minutes / German Version
Director: Wim Wenders
Stars: Koji Yakusho, Yumi Asô, Tokio Emoto

Hirayama seems completely content with his simple life as a toilet cleaner in Tokyo. Outside of his very structured everyday life, he enjoys his passion for music and books. And he loves trees and photographing them. A series of unexpected encounters gradually reveals more of his past. A deeply moving and poetic reflection on the search for beauty in the everyday world around us.

Bhutan, Hungary 2024 / 93 Minutes / Original version with Subtitles
Director: Arun Bhattarai, Dorottya Zurbó

How can one measure happiness? The country of Bhutan has invented ‘Gross National Happiness’ to do just that. The directing duo Arun Bhattarai and Dorottya Zurbó accompany the happiness official Amber in his work: he has the task of travelling through the country and using a questionnaire to record how happy people really are.

Whether they own a donkey, a tractor or a laptop - they all talk with unafraid honesty and wisdom about their lives, about what makes them happy and what does not. At 40, Amber himself still lives with his old mother and dreams of finding true love. So he is not only travelling on behalf of happiness, but also in search of his own happiness.

South Korea 1989 / 133 Minutes / Original version with subtitles
Director: Yong-kyun Bae
Stars: Won-sop Sin, Pan-yong Yi, Hae-jin Huang

An old Zen master, his pupil and an adolescent orphan boy live in a Buddhist monastery in the seclusion of a mountain forest. The three of them - who can stand for the three ages of a person - are at different stages in their search for truth and meaning, in the midst of a dominating nature with its elements of water, fire, air and earth. This aesthetically captivating work, created over eight years, conveys the experience of a spiritual search for inner harmony.

Switzerland 2024 / 90 Minutes / English original with Subtitles
Director: Philip Delaquis, Barbara Miller
Stars: Dalai Lama

At the height of his life, in the field of tension between millennia-old Tibetan Buddhist traditions and Western, globalised society, the Dalai Lama looks at our modern world today, with its technological and social achievements, struggling to end violence and war on the brink of imminent climate collapse. As the first Nobel Peace Prize laureate, and recognised for his commitment to protecting our planet, the Dalai Lama shows us that the creation of a more peaceful and happier world is possible for all living beings and that everyone has the necessary tools within them.