Anhedonia - Narzissmus als Narkose (2015)

The film is set in 2020. According to the narrator, billions of people around the world fall victim every day to “the digital, media-driven, narcissistic, hedonistic, careerist and consumer-oriented sensory overload and indoctrination imposed by the Establishment.” Hundreds of millions of citizens in the Western world are falling ill in epidemic numbers with anhedonia—the inability to feel joy, pleasure, love or fun. Two prototypical sufferers are the inseparable “aristocrat’s boys,” Franz and Fritz Freudenthal, who had to witness the staged deaths of their famous actor parents live when they were children and then grew up in a caring nudist sect. Although they possess material resources beyond imagination, their lives are empty and boring. With no meaning or purpose, they let reintroduced slaves carry them around on palanquins. They are drawn to the unique new pleasure-stimulus therapy of the world-famous psychotherapist Prof. Dr. Immanuel Young, from whom they expect a solution to their problem. At his Seelenfrieden facility on the coast of Pellworm, they hope to overcome their illness. His four-phase therapy, marked by surprising elements, ends with the writing of a wish list which, according to a film director who reappears on a meta-level, lays bare humanity’s stupidity.