DeINCEPTION examines the ongoing social debate over the meaning and pursuit of happiness in the 21st century, framed by a 40-day personal vision quest in the Tasmanian wilderness.

Happiness – the ultimate end of all human actions, the source of our motivations, and the expression of our highest good – has always stood at the centre of philosophical inquiry into “the good life” and “the good society.”

Since Thomas Jefferson and beyond, the “pursuit of happiness” has been enshrined as a self-organizing principle meant to sustain both personal life and liberal democratic society. Yet today, this pursuit seems to have led us into a crisis – economically, ecologically and socially – and most strikingly, as observed by the ever-rising rates of psychological depression.

DeINCEPTION narrates the hidden and controversial transformation of the “pursuit of happiness” ideal: from its original meaning, to today’s diminished version – as the “pursuit of pleasure.”

How has this new script for happiness been shaped and propagated in our post-modern world? And who ultimately benefits?

John Angheli’s story begins by revisiting the foundational premises of happiness: not as fleeting “smiley-face feelings,” but as the deep root of motivation itself – the force that moves all desire, and thus the ground zero of ethics, irrespective of background or creed. We all desire to be happy, and we cannot wish otherwise.

The film’s inciting incident occurs when Angheli survives a near-fatal car accident, forcing him to confront life’s ultimate purpose.

As a researcher of philosophy and psychology, he’s struck by a paradox: Why don’t we know, with confidence, what truly makes us happy? Why does our happiness pursuit so often lead to choices that increase misery? And why, at the most liberal, prosperous, and equitable time in human history, are rates of suicide, depression, and many other pathologies soaring?

Challenged by these dilemmas, Angheli takes a radical step. He embarks on a 40-day solitary vision quest in the Tasmanian wilderness.

There he draws upon the ancient practice of chilla nashini – a rite of passage that requires fasting from food, relationships and ordinary concerns, in order to focus wholly on just one essential question. (The ancients believed no enduring knowledge could be gained without sacrifice – that to obtain everything, one must be willing to lose everything.)

For the first time on film, DeINCEPTION captures what this intense physical, psychological, and spiritual ordeal entails.

While the “vision quest” functions as both a literal and metaphorical inner journey, the documentary interrogates the broader systems in which our happiness ideals are embedded – the question of economics, social relations, and educational pathways.

These questions juxtapose Angheli’s subjective insights with leading scientific and philosophical research on happiness, exposing the dominance of a worldview that equates happiness with pleasure (what psychologists call ‘hedonic happiness’) – tracing its historical rise, revealing whose interests it serves, and examining the costs it exacts.

Yet the film also uncovers an alternative, a largely hidden map of happiness – one rooted in virtue, meaning, and integration. DeINCEPTION explores the profound implications of applying this forgotten vision: for personal lives, social relations, and even our relationship to the environment.

DeINCEPTION is all about this essential, timeless question: What is the nature of happiness, really?

After a near-fatal car accident that made me realize my unhappiness, I decided to take on a 40-day ‘Chilla-Nashini’, out in the Tasmanian wilderness, to figure out my life anew.

There, as going into the recesses of his mind, and listening to the great philosophers from the Age of Enlightenment, I uncovered a fundamental, almost invisible self-deception, that messes our lives up…

It’s quite a simple idea, but because it’s at the ground-floor of all our motivations – it has profound consequences.