Mission: Joy – Finding Happiness in Troubled Times

A room has never heard more laughter than when His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu sit down in easy chairs to shoot the breeze in the spring of 2015. The delightful documentary MISSION: JOY – FINDING HAPPINESS IN TROUBLED TIMES features never-before-seen footage that inspired The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World. The film is a witness of the endearing friendship of an Asian Buddhist and an African Christian—both winners of the Nobel Peace Prize, who each manifested their own timeless legacies of nonviolence and compassion for others in their respective corners of the world. The story weaves together the friends’ childhoods and paths to prominence, while the icons reflect and field questions about life, death, and how to wring out happiness from places where none can be found. While their awe-inspiring reputations set an assumed tone of solemn reverence, the pair are human after all, and they flood the interaction with blissful moments of relatable, down-to-earth joy that’s refreshingly unexpected. —A.B.