HAPPY
GERMANY 83 MIN
RUSSIAN PREMIERE
ABOUT
It’s probably every daughter’s worst nightmare: a postcard from Thailand that says: “My darling, I’m doing great here, eating Pad Thai and drinking Chang Beer. And I’ve met someone. She’s your age! Love, Dad.”
My father Dieter has changed a lot in the past couple of years. After separating from my mother, he exchanged his hiking boots for flip-flops and every year for a couple of weeks, he travels to Thailand. Sometimes he travels alone, sometimes with friends – all of them are divorced and over 60.
My father says that he is having the time of his life over there. I think to myself: Oh my God, is my father a sex tourist? What does he want from a Thai woman, 30 years younger than him? And what the hell does she want from him?
My father and I travel to Thailand together, where I meet my almost stepmother and her family. Slowly but surely I begin to realize that there are no definite answers to my various indignant questions.
“Happy” is an affectionate, ruthless, cheerful and very personal documentary about a father and his daughter, the search for happiness in the autumn years of life and the question of what love actually is when you are over 60 and afraid of growing old alone.
DIRECTOR
CAROLINE GENREITH
Carolin Genreith was born in Aachen in 1984 and grew up in the North Eifel. After spending one year in London, she studied TV producing and journalism in Berlin and worked in a cinema.
Her debut film Die mit dem Bauch tanzen (Dancing with Bellies) premiered at the Berlinale 2013 and won the Audience Award at the German Film Festival in Ludwigshafen. The film was successfully shown in cinemas with an audience of more than 50.000 and was boradcasted by the ARD.
Carolin won the ARD Doku Pitch competition in 2014 with her film Das Golddorf (The Golden Village, which premiered at Dokfest Munich in 2015. HAPPY ist her third full-length documentary film. Carolin Genreith lives and works as a freelance writer and director in Hamburg.OTHER FESTIVALS
- DOK Leipzig, Germany 2016
- Duisburger Filmtage, Germany 2016
- Dokfest Kassel, Germany 2016
- DocPoint Helsiniki, Finland 2017
SECTION
Main Competition 2017