Description

This award winning documentary was inspired by the director’s friend, Hallie Leighton, who passed away from breast cancer while the documentary was being filmed. Hallie was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer after years of normal mammograms. This film exposes the little known fact that mammograms are ineffective screening tools for the 40% of women with dense breast tissue. In these women, who account for over 70% of invasive cancers, mammograms miss up to 75% of these cancers. For years, professional medical organizations have withheld this information from the nearly 40 million women who are screened with mammography in the United States.”Happygram” is a term used to describe the form letter women receive stating that their mammograms are “normal.” Alas, for thousands of women with dense breasts, their Happygram turned out to be anything but.The producer of this film, Julie Marron, conceived the idea of making a documentary on mammography’s failings after her friend, New York writer Hallie Leighton, was diagnosed with late-stage breast cancer after many years of “normal” mammograms.Leighton died in 2013 at the age of 42 while the documentary was being filmed.The film features several women who were not informed of their breast density, or of the increased cancer risk that dense breast poses, or of the fact that mammograms can — and frequently do — miss cancer when you have dense breasts.Unfortunately, breast cancer is big business, and mammography is one of its primary profit centers. This is why the industry is so reluctant to admit its many flaws and dangers.”Happygram” reveals the oft-ignored side of breast cancer screening with mammography — the fact that more often than not, it fails to identify cancer in women with dense breast tissue.