Every year on Sicily’s Mondello Beach, over a thousand cabins are erected to house summer-holidaying families. A community gathers, spending their days and nights together, sharing meals, taking night swims, watching soccer, singing karaoke, and enjoying beach parties. In a series of stunning shots, on firm ground and underwater, director Giovanni Totaro follows the enormous crowd of vacationing families and singles. The holiday-makers try to stay true to their mission of escapism, but they can’t ignore politics, the financial crisis and the thought of emigrating, as they consider what awaits them at the end of the season. Using humour as a cinematic tool, Happy Winter is a funny and heart-warming film that examines the economic crisis in Italy through the microcosm of a beach.