Arun Bhattarai

The documentary team follows two happiness agents in their forties who spend a month and a half on the road twice a year, going door-to-door with their questionnaires in isolated villages in the Himalayas. The filmmakers undertake to provide an intimate insight into the daily lives and desires of Bhutanese people, and also seek the answer to the universal question of whether happiness can really be measured. Gross National Happiness promises a heart-warming journey into a mysterious, fairytale-like world, which is the exact opposite of the social order dominated by consumption and desires.

Brother and sister Gyembo and Tashi are normal teenagers. They love soccer and their phones. In their Himalayan village, their father oversees a Buddhist temple that has been in the family for generations. He hopes his son will one day take over his duties. He would prefer that Gyembo leave his modern English-language school in favor of a monk school. In this thoughtful and tender portrait of a Bhutanese family, the generation gap is as large as their love for one another. Celibacy doesn't offer an enticing future to an adolescent boy, which Gyembo's father understands. Nonetheless, he still tries to convince his son that being a monk offers many advantages. Meanwhile, Tashi feels more like a boy than a girl, and dreams of a life as a pro soccer player. She wants to attend a soccer camp that would be the first step in being selected for the national team. Unfortunately, though happiness is high on the political agenda in Bhutan, not all wishes come true.

In Bhutan, 11-year-old Yangchen’s father is the country’s glacier specialist, and thus the only person authorized to climb the mountains, which are considered to be sacred. He spends months away from home measuring the rapidly melting glaciers. While hiking through the snow to the farthest reaches of the Bhutanese Himalayas, he faithfully shoots videos for his daughter with his phone. These videos take the viewer into breathtaking landscapes, but it also becomes increasingly apparent that something irreversible is happening.