15/11/2022 - Arnaud Robert and Paolo Woods’ documentary is a journey into the world of pharmaceuticals and the globalised obligation to be happy, courtesy of a pill

What is happiness? This question which religion and philosophy have asked themselves over the centuries has morphed, in modern times, into “can happiness come in a pill?”, to which Big Pharma science offers up an immediate, straightforward and devastating answer, and which governments have only contested very weakly, while the media turns happiness into a duty rather than a right. And it’s this question which forms the basis of Happy Pills [+see also:
trailer
film profile], a documentary by Swiss director Arnaud Robert - who already has three other documentaries under his belt - and Paolo Woods - a Canadian-Dutch photographer devoted to investigative journalism - which enjoyed its world premiere at Florence’s Festival dei Popoli.

In order to drill down into the globalised obligation to be happy, Happy Pills sets out on a voyage across 6 different countries, gathering stories which lend context to the original question. The film opens in the slums of Bombay, where young bodybuilders ply themselves with steroids in order to take part in competitions. But it soon moves on to other continents, starting at home, in Switzerland, one of the three “happiest” countries in the world, where one person in four will seek treatment for depression at least once in their lives. Here, we meet Patrick who uses sertraline and quetiapine to combat his suicidal tendencies and is endlessly admitted and discharged from a psychiatric hospital, where other pharmaceuticals are used to stabilise his incurable sadness and make his reality bearable. Pharmaceuticals which have killed millions of people in the West have now found their way to the poorest countries of the world: Alzouma is a young man in Niger who takes Tramadol - a powerful painkiller peddled on the street, which has replaced the traditional tree bark infusion - in order to work the countless hours a day required of him without tiring. In Massachusetts, meanwhile, teenager Addy turns to Adderall and Ritalin to treat his attention deficit disorder (a diagnosis received by 10% of young people in the USA), because his mother doesn’t want his schoolwork to be as awful as his Uncle Jay’s.  

This journey in search of happiness continues via Maris, a youngster from Tel Aviv, who wants to live his homosexuality to the full without fear of AIDS, and whose ritual, every morning, is to take pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) pills. For him, PrEP is as close as he can get to “peace of mind”, despite the doctor explaining that the good old condom remains the best line of defence. Another drug for happiness, or rather for freedom, is “the pill”, par excellence: the contraceptive. Our documentary follows Yurica, a young woman from the Peruvian Amazon, who injects herself with contraceptives so as not to become pregnant again while raising her four children alone, in a country where the (dangerous) concept of the “natural method” still dominates, and where, traditionally, men aren’t held responsible for children. Our pharmaceutical tour ends with a French intellectual called Louis, who is suffering from pancreatic cancer, who opts for assisted suicide in Switzerland and who is subsequently injected with Pentobarbital. He’s an example of a person who has lived a happy life and would prefer an equally serene and conscious end.

Taking a traditional approach, and verging on a classic investigation, the lens of Robert and Woods’ camera scrutinises the faces of these stories’ protagonists, looking for a sign to explain their abuse of anti-anxiety meds, anti-depressants, sleeping tablets and opioids, which heal human wounds. It’s a transversal journey which doesn’t judge, all too aware of the fact that we’re all looking for chemical answers to an existential question. Their brief comments - rather than actual sentences - express concern for a world dominated by the fear of failure and by the pressure to succeed, where adolescence is seen as an illness, and where appearing to be happy and actually being happy are simply one and the same.

Happy Pills is produced by Swiss firm Intermezzo Films in co-production with RTS’ Documentary Films Unit, SSR-SRG and ARTE G.E.I.E. International sales are entrusted to Lightdox.

(Translated from Italian)