Manufacturing Happiness

Books, apps, coaching sessions: Today, happiness is everywhere. We might think that there is nothing wrong with this common-sense concern. But it’s actually the opposite of social reality. So what lies behind this contemporary obsession with happiness and the billions of euros generated by its industry? Philosophers, sociologists, economists and psychiatrists including Christophe André, Éva Illouz, Martin Seligman and Julia De Funès, confront their point of view and decipher one of the most captivating and worrying phenomena of this early century.

Living the Game

In the world of computer games, there are players earning fight money as a PRO. They are sponsored by digital tool companies or beverage companies, and tour around the world to earn money in tournaments. This film goes over the days of Pro Gamers in Japan, USA, France and Taiwan.

The Hugo's Brain

The Hugo's Brain is a French documentary-drama about autism. The documentary crosses authentic autistic stories with a fiction story about the life of an autistic (Hugo), from childhood to adulthood, portraying his difficulties and his handicap.

Gage

In 1848, Phineas Gage suffers an unspeakable brain injury when a tamping rod plunges through his skull, causing dramatic shifts in his personality. His physician Dr Harlow watches over his recovery and must choose whether or not to fight for this outcasts place in the local community.

Derren Brown: Infamous

Multi award-winning psychological illusionist Derren Brown returns in the recording of his acclaimed live show ‘Infamous’. Featuring Derren at his baffling best with the excitement of a live theatre audience, Infamous includes amazing, provocative, jaw dropping demonstrations of his incredible skills of magic, suggestion, showmanship and misdirection in a must-watch roller coaster of emotions.

Tawai: A Voice from the Forest

Explorer Bruce Parry visits nomadic tribes in Borneo and the Amazon in hope to better understand humanity's changing relationship with the world around us.

OCD and Me

Do you REALLY know what OCD is? Dig beyond the stereotypes in this documentary, profiling multiple people who deal with this mental illness in all its known and often unknown forms every single day.

Voices from the Shadows

‘Voices from the Shadows’ shows the brave and sometimes heartrending stories of five ME patients and their carers, along with input from Dr Nigel Speight, Prof Leonard Jason and Prof Malcolm Hooper. These were filmed and edited between 2009 and 2011, by the brother and mother of an ME patient in the UK. It shows the devastating consequences that occur when patients are disbelieved and the illness is misunderstood. Severe and lasting relapse occurs when patients are given inappropriate psychological or behavioural management: management that ignores the severe amplification of symptoms that can be caused by increased physical or mental activity or exposure to stimuli, and by further infections. A belief in behavioural and psychological causes, particularly when ME becomes very severe and chronic, following mismanagement, is still taught to medical students and healthcare professionals in the UK. As a consequence, situations similar to those shown in the film continue to occur.

In mijn Hoofd is Alles Leuker

The Soul Keeper

Zurich, 1905. Nineteen-year-old Russian Sabina Spielrein is put by her parents in a psychiatric hospital, suffering from a severe form of hysteria and refusing to eat. A compassionate doctor, Carl Gustav Jung, takes her under his care and, for the first time, experiments with the psychoanalytical method of his teacher Sigmund Freud. Thus is born a sweeping story of love and passion, of body and soul, soaring to the utmost heights, but also plunging to the darkest depths of the 20th century.

Entheogen: Awakening the Divine Within

A feature length documentary which invites the viewer to rediscover an enchanted cosmos in the modern world by awakening to the divine within. The film examines the re-emergence of archaic techniques of ecstasy in the modern world by weaving a synthesis of ecological and evolutionary awareness,electronic dance culture, and the current pharmacological re-evaluation of entheogenic compounds.

The Stanford Prison Experiment

An intensive psychological test by Professor Philip Zimbardo in 1971 saw US students volunteer to play prisoners and guards in an bid to examine the nature of good and evil. Within five days, four prisoners had broken down and another was on hunger strike. This film, containing strong language, reveals why the test was abandoned after less than a week.

Experimenter

Yale University, 1961. Stanley Milgram designs a psychology experiment that still resonates to this day, in which people think they’re delivering painful electric shocks to an affable stranger strapped into a chair in another room. Despite his pleads for mercy, the majority of subjects don’t stop the experiment, administering what they think is a near-fatal electric shock, simply because they’ve been told to do so. With Nazi Adolf Eichmann’s trial airing in living rooms across America, Milgram strikes a nerve in popular culture and the scientific community with his exploration into people’s tendency to comply with authority. Celebrated in some circles, he is also accused of being a deceptive, manipulative monster, but his wife Sasha stands by him through it all.

They Heard Voices

THEY HEARD VOICES is a documentary film exploring the Hearing Voices Movement, chronic psychosis, and the schizophrenia label. The film is a series of wide-ranging interviews with voice hearers, medical historians, anthropologists and psychiatrists from Britain and America, presenting different people’s views. Is schizophrenia hard science or an arbitrary, catch-all term with no real meaning? What does it mean for those experiencing psychosis?

Space: The Longest Goodbye

Social isolation affects millions of people, even Mars-bound astronauts. A savvy NASA psychologist is tasked with protecting these daring explorers.

Die Biografie des Bösen

Why is a person evil? Is evil in the genes? These questions have always preoccupied people. The approaches to explaining evil are as varied as evil itself. The latest science assumes that there are three factors that shape human behavior: genes, the environment and the individual situation. All three factors interact and influence each other. The film presents the latest research and addresses one of the most exciting questions in behavioral research.

Stimmen im Kopf

Around six to 15 percent of all people (study by John Hearst 2011) hear voices at some point in their lives. Many of them even live with their invisible companions for their entire lives. Well over half of voice hearers are mentally healthy and lead a completely unremarkable life. Despite this, voice hearers continue to be stigmatized and are subject to prejudice. As a result, few speak openly about their experiences. In recent decades in particular, however, voice hearing has been regarded as a symptom of impaired brain function. The documentary sheds light on the phenomenon. Sufferers describe the voices in their heads, as well as the thoughts and feelings they trigger in them, and scientists explain the causes that lead people to hear voices.

I am Fishead

A provocative snapshot of the world we live in. It is a well-known fact that our society is structured like a pyramid. The very few people at the top create conditions for the majority below. Who are these people? Can we blame them for the problems our society faces today? Guided by the saying “A fish rots from the head” we set out to follow that fishy odor. What we found out is that people at the top are more likely to be psychopaths than the rest of us.

Behind the Curve

Meet the growing, worldwide community of theorists who defend the belief that the Earth is flat while living in a society who vehemently rejects it.

Perfecting the Art of Longing

Cut off from his loved ones due to the strict COVID-19 lockdown at the long-term care facility where he lives, a quadriplegic rabbi is filmed by his daughter while reflecting on love, mortality and longing.