The history of still life painting with oil paints

Social status in a capitalistic society is a major factor in how people live their lives. This social status greatly revolves around a person’s financial status. This film examines how the quest to move up the social ladder has brought untold depression and anxieties about ones self.

Based on Alain de Botton's book The Architecture of Happiness.

A journalist meets “Man of Today” who, while a responsible citizen, is disengaged from greater society. He believes once he’s dead nothing more matters. As an experiment to see if she can turn his pessimistic view around, the journalist sends him on a journey of enlightenment to prove that the future does matter. Travelling the globe, he finds himself in surprising encounters with great minds in the arts and sciences. Starting with an unexpected poetry reading and conversation with experimental poet Christian Bök, Man of Today engages with architect Shigeru Ban, activist Francis Dupuis-Déri, philosopher Alain de Botton, artist Marlene Dumas, novelist Rivka Galchen, leading scientists and a ghost. Will the journalist succeed in turning a cynic into an optimist? Will it matter? What can one person do?

A docu-drama portrait of the early-20th-century French author Marcel Proust, based on Alain de Botton's updated analysis of his work as a modern-day self-help guide. Ralph Fiennes plays Proust, with Phyllida Law and Donald Sinden as his contemporaries, while commentators including de Botton, Louis de Bernières and Doris Lessing explain their enthusiasm for his work.

The period of time we find hardest to inhabit is the present; for a range of powerful reasons we should take on board.

Alain de Botton, Edgar Morin, Fredric Jameson, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, and Orhan Pamuk converse with Brazilian thinkers and artists, creating a dialogue based on their theories and constructing a reflection on identity in the contemporary world.