Exchanging with the audience following a screening of the film « What is happiness to you? »
On March 11th 2018, EUDOKIMA was at the Fontainebleau cinema. Founder Sonia Weyers was facilitating, together with Amandine Ventadour, parental coach, a screening-discussion session around the film « C’est quoi le bonheur pour vous ? » (What is happiness to you?) Directed by Julien Peron.
Julien traveled the world far and wide asking this question to people with whom he crossed paths and with this documentary, he shares an in-depth reflection on the many determinants of happiness today.
Sonia was delighted to lead this event, having personally been busy with this topic of happiness for more than 30 years and professionally for almost 20 years. Moreover, Julien Peron, the director of the documentary, wrote the foreword of the French version of Sonia’s book “Happiness Now!”
Regarding the documentary
In order to make it available to a broader audience, Director Julien Peron distributes it for free, allowing anyone to organize a screening. It was a beautiful opportunity to share with our community a reflection on what happiness is for each and every one of us ! We thank the whole team at the Fontainebleau cinema L’Ermitage for responding to our invitation and to have welcomed us for the screening-discussion on March 11th.
We started the discussion by addressing two broad categories of themes developed in the film.
The first is that happiness is an internal personal matter, before being able to share it.
Within this theme, we can find the notions of inner peace, of resilience, of listening to our desires, of connecting to who we really are, of knowing and understanding ourselves, of self-compassion and only then, cultivating relationships.
The second major theme is that of responsibility.
Indeed, as long as we see the problem outside ourselves, the solution is also outside ourselves. The only way to have a grip on our own happiness is to take responsibility for it. There are tools for this, which can be learned. You may read “Happiness Now! A Guided Journey” or “Votre Bonheur pas-à-pas” (in French) if you are interested in exploring these tools.
We can talk about gratitude, meditation, forgiveness, nutrition for example and responsibility can be found on multiple levels: individually, as a parent, at work, etc.
The public questioned us on several topics among which:
- We can see in the film that material goods don’t bring happiness. How can we explain this to our children?
- What can we do when people in our environment make it hard for us to be happy?
It made me very happy to participate in the spreading of the film “C’est quoi le Bonheur pour vous?” and to do it in Fontainebleau, my area of activity. Thank you, Julien, for directing this documentary and for sharing it, thank you to the Cinema L’Ermitage and thank you to Amandine for joining me in facilitating this discussion.
