Four year old Shahida paints a smile on a red balloon and calls it “Happiness”. Together with her mother she decides to float it, the idea being that it will spread happiness in the world. However soon she realizes that she is missing her “happiness” and frantically starts searching for the balloon in the sky. Unable to track it she runs away from her apartment in the hope of finding Happiness much to the dismay of her mother. Shahida’s mother is desperately looking for her little girl who has left the house alone and roaming the streets of Kolkata “Searching for Happiness“. Shahida’s journey intersects with other characters- a rickshaw puller, a waste collector, a salon worker, a joker in a circus- who are all in their own ways searching for happiness. The film is about these many journeys in quest for happiness in this complex world.
Suman Ghosh is a National Award winning Indian filmmaker. He has made 12 feature films and two documentary films. His films have been to several prestigious film festivals all over the world, including Busan, Rotterdam, Shanghai, Karlovy Vary and others. He has worked with several iconic actors such as Soumitra Chatterjee, Mithun Chakraborty, Aparna Sen, Nandita Das, Konkona Sensharma and others in his films. His latest feature ‘The Ancient’ stars legendary Indian actress Sharmila Tagore in the lead role. It is releasing all over India on the 11th of April. He divides his time between Miami and Kolkata. 
The New York Indian Film Festival (NYIFF) is the oldest, most prestigious film festival screening premieres of feature, documentary and
short films made from, of, and about the Indian subcontinent in the Independent, arthouse, alternate and diaspora genres.
