Can true happiness and success be measured by material possessions? What is the personal and global impact of our consumer culture? Is there an alternative?

Minimalism: A Documentary About the Important Things examines the many aspects of the growing “minimalist” movement that is challenging compulsory consumerism and seeking a different path.

The authors of two best-selling books on minimalism, Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus, take viewers on a road trip across America that reveals the core ideas behind minimalism and meets people who share their transformational stories.

Millburn and Nicodemus are friends from college who lived the corporate rat race only to find that it never really brought them happiness. Though their paychecks grew, the void in their lives remained the same. Each had their own personal breaking point that moved them away from the consumer lifestyle.

From architects, designers, and musicians, to businessmen, authors, and families, the film explores the ways that many different types of people are attempting to live simpler, more meaningful lives, and their varied motivations for doing so.

Among the leading voices in the minimalist movement the film visits with are: sociologist/author Juliet Schor, Zen Habit’s Leo Babauta, Becoming Minimalist’s Joshua Becker, neuroscientist/author Sam Harris, and Colin Beavan, aka “No Impact Man”. Each lends their experience living a minimalist life and delves into the environmental, social and psychological wake that is the result of compulsive consumerism.