08.05.25, 20:30, Le Bonheur (1965)

In Le Bonheur, Agnès Varda paints a sun-drenched utopia that is slowly cracking. François, a young carpenter with a loving wife and children, seems to live a perfect life. When he starts an affair, he is convinced that his happiness will only increase-without consequences, without guilt. With her signature eye for colour and composition, Varda envelops this moral ambiguity in summer splendour. Blooming fields, impressionistic tableaux and Mozart on the soundtrack contrast with the undercurrent chill of François' impassive reasoning. Is happiness infinitely divisible, or is it always at someone else's expense?

‘A summer peach with perfect colours and inside a worm,’ Varda herself described. Her playful yet relentless approach makes Le Bonheur as seductive as it is unsettling. Beneath the idyllic images lies a sharp dissection of male complacency and the fragile balance between freedom and selfishness.

This film is introduced by the short film Rendez Nous by KASK & Conservatorium student Elias Dieusaert.