Joybubbles

we can only hope to find the happiness that Joybubbles found at the Holiday Inn — manages to be a heartening document of disability awareness and perseverance as well as one person's ability, and willingness, to exploit the system; dude rocks

Justin LaLiberty

JOYBUBBLES is a sweet and quietly uplifting look at Joe Engressia, a blind phone savant who turned his obsession with sound and connection into a life built on curiosity, play, and radical openness. Using inventive archival audio, animation, and retro textures, Rachael J.…

Matt Neglia

“Joybubbles” isn’t the type of groundbreaking work that’ll set Sundance ablaze. Its modesty and sincerity, which could easily be confused as saccharine, arrive with an assuming commitment to the spirit of its remarkable subject that it’s downright dream-affirming. The film…

Robert Daniels

This starts off as kind of a quirky human interest story, the kind you’d find tacked onto the end of a local news broadcast. But as the story moves beyond the phone whistling / phone hacking and dives into Josef Engressia (aka Joybubbles) life philosophy I found myself…

Kevflix And Chill

Sundance 2026: #7 The only real knockout for me from Sundance this year. One of the great joys of documentary filmmaking is discovering stories that are so odd and absurd that you wouldn’t believe they were real if they hadn’t actually happened. Such is the case with…

Mitchell Beaupre

Is there any better tribute to such a warm, pure soul and naturally gifted storyteller like telling his story via a documentary that evokes Mr. Roger's Neighborhood using retro TV techniques, animation, and vintage stock footage. I needed this hug of a film.

Meagan Navarro

Warm and inviting, while also being honest about the cruelty of the world, Joybubbles is a loving and quiet tribute to a man who deserved so much more from the world, while also crafting his own escape through his natural talent for whistling. It is a great reminder how…

Movie Good or Movie Bad?

A great doc the deftly mixes rich archival material and newly recorded interviews to both paint a colorful portrait of its subject, but also shine a light on a forgotten analog subculture Sundance #15

Marya E. Gates

Sweet little documentary. Doesn’t really go much of anywhere in the end but it’s a nice watch. Very interesting story overall!

Paul