Money and Happiness
2022 · 10m · Serbia
Directed by Ana Nedeljković, Nikola Majdak Jr.
Genres: animation, dark comedy, satire
Tones: absurdist, darkly comic, provocative
A dystopian satire of economics set in Hamsterland, a perfect country where hamsters live and work hard in a flawless, ever-growing economy.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A hamster economy as the perfect vessel for eviscerating growth-at-all-costs ideology—the premise is audacious enough that lesser hands would bungle it into preach, but these directors let the absurdity do the work, which is exactly why it lands.
The film's formal restraint—its commitment to the hamster-world logic without winking—situates it within a lineage of Aesopian satire that stretches from Orwell forward; the animation's deliberate flatness becomes a curatorial choice that deepens the critique.
The decision to play everything with complete earnestness rather than mugging at the camera transforms what could be a one-note premise into something with actual bite—that tonal discipline is what separates this from a sketch.