Man's Search for Happiness (1964)

A narrator examines life's greatest questions, such as "Who am I?", "Where did I come from?", "Why am I here?", and "Where am I going?". Actors, primarily depicting one family, pass through scenes spanning from premortality through this life and into the eternities.

Many consider this to be the most important film the LDS Church has ever produced; it at least proved a milestone and a turning point in Church film production. Created for the 1964 World's Fair in New York, it was the first film done by the BYU Motion Picture Studio in 35mm, their first done for a primarily non-LDS audience, and their first depicting premortality. Despite its short length it was one of their most expensive and difficult films up to that point. It was immensely successful at the Fair, showing to an estimated five million people, and it later played for years at Temple Square and was distributed extensively on 16mm film, especially in a version that contained Fair footage as well, called The Mormon Pavilion. It prompted an increase in the Church's efforts to dub its films into foreign languages, and it was even remade in 1970 in a Japanese version. Another remake, retaining the original narration, was done in 1987.