Shorts

'Money and Happiness' by Ana Nedeljovic and Nikola Majdak Jr. (2022): Film Review

Vassilis Kroustallis 22 May 2026

'Money and Happiness' by Ana Nedeljovic and Nikola Majdak Jr. animation film still

This is the third installment of a stop-motion animation trilogy on democracy and the current state of our social world that started with the Crystal Bear winner 'Rabbitland' (2013, our film review) and the Annie Award-nominated 'Untravel' (2018, interview with the directors).

The two previous short animation films focused on the core of democracy and its elections (Rabbitland), borders and their inescapability (Untravel). The last one, 'Money and Happiness' (2022, Serbia/Slovenia/Slovakia), takes on the economy and the thriving numbers.

Elizabeth Dunn is an associate professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia. In her book Happy Money: The Science of Smarter Spending, she notes that what you do with your money matters as much for your happiness as how much you make. So, let's calculate what hamsters have to do. In the hamsterland of 'Money and Happiness', hamsters have already been set out to do the basic tasks of a) pushing buttons down b) looking goofily happy and c) buying dreams while on their computer. It doesn't really matter how much they make (the narrator will give us all the exquisite financial details), but how much ordained they are to do things with the money they make.

This is a happy oppression that unfolds at three levels: the operating and business room (covered in a monochrome yellow, the appropriate color of coins), the underground activities (in the red of blood, not passion), and the control room, where the hamsters are being observed.

Money and Happiness puppet animation film still

Rather than just a parable about fake presentation of financial situations, 'Money and Happiness' insists on the Instagram-like facade of being satisfied with your own misery (dressed as group happiness). Orwell's Newspeak here sounds very familiar: substitute 'problem' with 'challenge', add the 'buy' next to your dreams, and your post-capitalist misery will transform itself into a productive, happy state.

Apart from the sardonic text (impeccably narrated by Masa Mileusnic) and the drops-of-rain, lullaby-like musical theme by Dusan Petrović, we witness a puppet movement that is between static and vigilant. The dreamlike state of the script carries over into the puppet movements, which sleepwalk throughout the film.

As for the puppet design, the protruding ears leave the hamster's little head all the more exposed to the ever-present banging of the economy signs and arrows.

This is a film that moves narratively from the parody of the entrepreneurial linguistic coding of success to the nightmare of its underbelly (it's difficult not to think of underpaid workers in the various parts of the world when watching the second film's segment) and back to the control room -where the illusion of free control is again shattered. Its incessant number-muttering (signs of perceived economic progress), coupled with the hamsters' complete lack of individuality in an environment that never looks natural or ordinary, brings out the best of modern confusion, with individual desires crushed by well-documented orders of wannabe economic perfection.

Sometimes, you need a comforting film to let you know that everything is OK. 'Money and Happiness' is not that film; what is more, it puts its finger in all the 'be well' unsubstantiated rhetoric, in a seemingly crude, direct but calculated manner. It just moves into bare anatomy, performs its own animation surgery, and reveals the not-so-cute insides. It is another fascinating stop-motion effort by the Ana Nedeljovic and Nikola Majdak Jr. duo, meant to be watched without a lot of money.