H.appiness
2020 · 13m
Directed by Luvia Petersen
Tones: absurdist, contemplative, darkly comic
An insecure man follows a happiness app into a seemingly perfect life, but after a remark makes him doubt the app he systematically dismantles that life and is forced to create his own happiness.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A man literally dismantles his own algorithmic paradise because an app made him feel bad—it's a premise that should be insufferable but somehow nails the absurdist comedy of outsourcing your emotional life to code. The fact that self-sabotage becomes the only honest path forward is exactly the kind of subversive logic that makes other scouts squirm.
Petersen orchestrates a careful tonal balance between satire and genuine melancholy, situating the film in a lineage of technology-anxiety narratives while maintaining formal control over when the comedy lands and when it breaks into something more contemplative.
The pivot—where the man's doubt about the app triggers his systematic dismantling rather than mere skepticism—is the decision that transforms what could've been a shallow premise into something that actually earns its emotional weight, and Petersen commits fully to that tonal shift.