Two Gay Refugees Risk It All for Love

Glances meet on the dance floor. Curious eyes linger a moment too long on the person opposite them. Reza, the Iranian played by Aron Archer, has just married, but his eyes aren’t fixed on his young wife; they’re on her brother. Already on their wedding night he slips into the bed of another man.
But happiness is short-lived. A neighbor has observed the two men and calls the morality police into action. While Reza narrowly escapes in the final moment, his lover is killed on the spot. As Reza sinks beneath the dawn, two men can be seen hanging from a construction crane not far away. Happiness remains out of reach for men like Reza in Iran. Homosexuals are not infrequently sentenced to death.
Director Léa Pool chooses a stark opening for her refugee drama, making the precarious and hopeless situation many migrants face immediately felt from the outset.

In Search of Happiness

After a cut, we find ourselves in Montreal and meet Saad (Mehdi Meskar), a young Moroccan who earns a living as a taxi driver. One day he drives Laurent (Alexandre Landry), the spokesperson for the minister of migration, and quickly starts turning his head.
Saad and the initially shy Laurent begin a relationship. It soon becomes clear, however, that the Moroccan has a purpose: he wants to help his great love Reza obtain a residence permit. The two met and fell in love while on the run, yet Reza is slated for deportation back to Iran, where certain death awaits him.
No Room for Morality
“We’ll Find Happiness” is not only the title of the film but also the refugees’ mantra. For a moment it seems they may have truly found happiness in Canada, but reality quickly catches up with them. One of the film’s most gripping scenes is the awkward examination by the Canadian asylum board, during which Reza is forced to reveal the most intimate details of his sex life and his emotional world. A moment that decides life or death and speaks to bureaucratic coldness.

Throughout, the film threads in scenes that trace Saad and Reza’s joint flight. These moments are especially intense and make Saad’s desperate attempt to save his lover genuinely understandable. When life and death are at stake, morality has no room. The director Léa Pool also leaves open whether the feelings Saad harbors for Laurent are truly love or merely performative. And whether Laurent’s love for Reza has perhaps already given way to a sense of duty. The emotional lives of all the characters remain ambivalent, which greatly contributes to the film’s realism.

Strong screenplay, strong performances
Alongside the powerful screenplay by Canadian dramatist Michel Marc Bouchard, who, like director Léa Pool, has previously told several memorable queer stories, it is chiefly the three leads who make the film feel credible and the triangular dynamic so multilayered. In particular, Aron Archer gives Reza remarkable depth, portraying the character’s torn conflict between the legitimate craving for personal happiness and the guilt of bringing shame on his family and deceiving his wife in Iran.
The political drama “We’ll Find Happiness” arrives at exactly the right moment and has, this year, earned, among other honors, the Audience Prize at Sofia Pride Film Festival and the Audience and Jury Prizes at the Miami OUTShine LGBTQ+ Film Festival.