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Roko Belic

Roko Belic

Directing

Biography

Best known for his emotionally powerful films that take viewers to exotic parts of the globe, director Roko Belic was born in 1971 in Seattle to Czechoslovakian and Yugoslavian parents. He grew up in the Chicago suburb of Evanston, Illinois. During his childhood, his mother used a wrench to lock a broken dial on the family TV to the local PBS channel. Belic became enchanted with non-fiction programs that gave him a “window to the world” and his passion for film was born. His first film-making experience was in third grade with his brother, Adrian, when they borrowed a super-8 movie camera from their parents. Belic attended the University of California at Santa Barbara, where he studied studio arts and foreign languages. During college, he took a year away from his studies to travel around the world among the cultures and people that would eventually become the inspiration for his work. Shortly after graduation, Belic and his brother founded the film production company Wadi Rum Films.

Known For

I Am
7.3

I AM is an utterly engaging and entertaining non-fiction film that poses two practical and provocative questions: what’s wrong with our world, and what can we do to make it better? The filmmaker behind the inquiry is Tom Shadyac, one of Hollywood’s leading comedy practitioners and the creative force behind such blockbusters as “Ace Ventura,” “Liar Liar,” “The Nutty Professor,” and “Bruce Almighty.” However, in I AM, Shadyac steps in front of the camera to recount what happened to him after a cycling accident left him incapacitated, possibly for good. Though he ultimately recovered, he emerged with a new sense of purpose, determined to share his own awakening to his prior life of excess and greed, and to investigate how he as an individual, and we as a race, could improve the way we live and walk in the world.

I Am

2010Movie
Happy
7.1

Happy is a 2011 feature documentary film directed, written, and co-produced by Roko Belic. It explores human happiness through interviews with people from all walks of life in 14 different countries, weaving in the newest findings of positive psychology. Director Roko Belic was originally inspired to create the film after producer/director Tom Shadyac (Liar, Liar, Patch Adams, Bruce Almighty) showed him an article in the New York Times entitled "A New Measure of Well Being From a Happy Little Kingdom". The article ranks the United States as the 23rd happiest country in the world. Shadyac then suggested that Belic make a documentary about happiness. Belic spent several years interviewing over 20 people, ranging from leading happiness researchers to a rickshaw driver in Kolkatta, a family living in a "co-housing community" in Denmark, a woman who was run over by a truck, a Cajun fisherman, and more.

Happy

2012Movie