Happiness Is
1972 · 7m · Canada
Directed by Clorinda Warny
Genres: animation, comedy, satire
Tones: absurdist, humorous, whimsical
A young mother's quiet park stroll with her sleeping baby is interrupted by passersby eager to offer unsolicited child-rearing advice.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
A 1972 animated satire about unsolicited parenting advice sounds like it should be toothless, but Warny actually uses the constraint of a single location to build something genuinely weird—every interruption escalates the absurdity rather than repeating the joke, which most shorts mess up.
Warny's work sits comfortably in the lineage of NFB animation's social commentary tradition, where formal control of line and movement becomes the vehicle for subtle critique; the whimsy here is disciplined, never winking at the audience.
The decision to keep the camera locked on the mother and baby while the world of advice comes *to* them—rather than cutting between reactions—means everything lands on performance and timing, and that stillness is what makes the satire sting instead of screech.