All We Ever Wanted

The hidden cost of success for a generation without limits

All We Ever Wanted is a highly visual documentary about a generation of young, creative, and ambitious people living the big city life. With their attractive appearance, fashionable clothes, and careers that seem to be taking off, they appear to embody the promise that everything is possible. The film looks beyond this polished surface to uncover what is wrong with this perfect picture and the price that has to be paid to have it all.

Directed by Dutch filmmaker Sarah Domogala, the documentary takes an intimate and sincere approach, closely observing people from her own social environment during their promising years. The film focuses on a group of talented young adults who, despite their early success, are caught in a maelstrom of growing pressure. Expectations that feel impossible to escape in modern society begin to take a toll, leading to panic attacks, depression, and obsessive compulsive disorder.

Set against the backdrop of 2010, a moment when the sky seems to be the limit, the film reflects a world where everyone can be successful, beautiful, popular, and constantly praised for their achievements. The freedom to move across countries, build careers in multiple places, and pursue endless opportunities is presented as normal. Yet even this abundance proves insufficient, as the idea of “enough” continues to recede.

As a key document of its time, All We Ever Wanted opens a necessary discussion about success, ambition, and mental health. It examines the dreams of a generation shaped by contemporary capitalist society, questioning whether limitless possibilities truly lead to fulfilment or instead create new forms of pressure and fragility.