NEWS: World’s First Happiness Film Festival Happening in Singapore2 min read

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Happiness Initiative is excited to announce the world’s first Happiness Film Festival, to raise greater awareness on happiness and well-being through films and post-screening dialogues. Through this festival, they want to encourage thought-provoking conversations and experiences with various speakers and audiences.

The festival will happen from 20–24 March at The Projector, *SCAPE and Aliwal Arts Centre. It will open on 20 March, in conjunction with the UN’s International Day of Happiness.

Co-Founder of Happiness Initiative, Simon Leow, shared: “Based on the World Happiness Report, Singapore is only ranked 34th, despite being more developed. There is much we can do to improve people’s well-being. Happiness Initiative is a social enterprise that focuses on promoting well-being and happiness. We wanted to use more engaging mediums to create more thought-provoking discussions, which led us to this journey of organising this film festival.”

This event is organised with the support of the National Youth Council and Our Singapore Fund.

The inaugural edition of the festival will have 6 feature films from 4 countries – USA, Japan, Taiwan and Denmark. Each film explores an aspect of well-being, and each screening will be followed by a post-screening dialogue with a panel of speakers who are knowledgeable in that domain.

Opening the festival is A Brave Heart: The Lizzie Valasquez Story, a documentary about the Lizzie Velásquez who overcame cyber-bullying to become a well-known motivational speaker. The post-screening dialogue will explore themes of resilience and kindness. The film will be co-presented by the Singapore Committee for UN Women.

The speakers for the post-screening dialogue include representatives from Singapore Kindness Movement and Twitter.

The festival also explores what it means to be happy from the perspective of other countries. Finding Hygge explores the idea of Hygge, a Danish concept which recently exploded in popularity around the world. The film will be co-presented by AirBnb, and there will also be a representative from the Embassy of Denmark to share about concept of Hygge.

There will also be a number of ancillary events happening before and during the film festival. Happiness Initiative, together with *SCAPE, will host their fifth edition of Screwed Up Moments, where they pull together speakers to share about their failures in life, focusing on these two message: it’s okay to fail and it’s okay to try again.

There will also be two Happiness 101 experiences, where Happiness Initiative will share more about the science and misconceptions of happiness, and the journey to discover meaning and purpose in life.