Agent of Happiness
Directors: Arun Bhattarai, Dorottya Zurbó
Country: Bhutan and Hungary
Language: Nepali and Dzongkha
Duration: 93 mins
Year: 2024

Happiness. An emotion so natural and so primal to human life that the Bhutanese government dedicated a separate commission to find a way to measure happiness and answer this precise question—how happy are the people of Bhutan? Across Bhutan’s mountainous terrain, filmmakers Arun Bhattarai and Dorottya Zurbó trail a trained survey interviewer, Amber, on his quest to collect information for the country’s Gross National Happiness Index. Through posing their own questions to interviewees, the directors draw out the people’s challenges and coping mechanisms; through tracking the life of the interviewer, they make him reflect on his own happiness quotient. This film attempts to uncover the gap between what people are able to articulate and how they truly feel, navigating the state’s efforts to quantify emotion while failing to take into account the ground realities that often tend to be overlooked. A story of amazing compassion, Agent of Happiness blurs the borders beautifully between the loud excitement of life and the quiet, everyday moments that often go unnoticed, in the process drawing attention to the fragility and beauty of happiness. The film debuted at Sundance festival 2024, where it was a Grand Jury Prize nominee. It subsequently won awards at the San Francisco International Film Festival, the Margaret Mead Film Festival and the Biografilm festival. It also won the Bhutan National Film Award in 2025.

Arun Bhattarai

Arun Bhattarai is one of the only independent documentary filmmakers from Bhutan, also formerly a TV director. His most recent film, Agent of Happiness, debuted at Sundance 2024, where it was a Grand Jury Prize nominee. It subsequently won awards at the San Francisco International Film Festival, Docs Against Gravity, the Margaret Mead Film Festival, the Biografilm festival, and was nominated for the IDA (International Documentary Association) awards. It also won the Bhutan National Film Award in 2025. His short documentary Mountain Man won the grand Jury prize for short films at the Oscar-qualifying DOC NYC 2023. His first feature length documentary The Next Guardian premiered at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam 2017. Arun’s films have been theatrically released and broadcast all over the world. They have received support from The Sundance Film Institute, The Catapult Film Fund and The IDFA Berth Fund, among others. He is a member of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences and has also served as Jury at the Sydney Film Festival, 2024.

Meet the Director!
Arun Bhattarai is visiting the festival on 21 March 2026!

Dorottya Zurbó

Dorottya Zurbó is a film director and university teacher from Budapest, Hungary. Her most recent feature length documentary (co-directed by Arun Bhattarai), Agent of Happiness, debuted at Sundance Film Festival 2024, where it was a Grand Jury Prize nominee. The film was nominated for the International Documentary Association (IDA) Awards in the Best Documentary and Best Cinematography categories in 2024.