On sera heureux [We’ll Find Happiness] ****(2025, Mehdi Meskar, Aron Archer, Alexandre Landry) – Classic Movie Review 13,936

Director Léa Pool’s 2025 Canadian/ Luxembourg drama film On sera heureux [We’ll Find Happiness] is written by Michel Marc Bouchard, and stars Mehdi Meskar, Aron Archer and Alexandre Landry. 

We’ll Find Happiness tells the story of Saad (Mehdi Meskar), a young Moroccan undocumented immigrant in Quebec who will do anything to save Reza (Aron Archer), the Iranian man he loves, from deportation from Canada to Iran, where likely death would await him

Taxi driver Saad sets out to seduce an influential high-ranking spokesperson at the Canadian Ministry of Immigration, Laurent (Alexandre Landry), who falls in love with him, and turns out to be a more than decent human being. But Saad’s risky, desperate idea to save Reza and his increasing involvement with Laurent, set off a heart-breaking chain of events.

We’ll Find Happiness is an agonisingly intense, moving, and vital film, overwhelmingly emotional and desperately sad. It tackles a big, important subject and breaks it down to a human sized drama so we can all be involved and empathise, maybe learn a few things about how life works, especially in the countries under scrutiny, Canada, Iran, Morocco. Every word rings true, and so do the performances, with ideal casting. Mehdi Meskar playing an attractive volcano constantly about to erupt, is outstanding, as he has to be: it is his character’s story. Alexandre Landry handles the Laurent character with sympathetic conviction, and Aron Archer does Reza right, a good, honourable man way out of his depth, bright but not bright enough, with no chance of survival without help from his friends (but does he have any?).

[Spoiler alert] Canada’s incredibly liberal take on LGBT folk and refugees is particularly under scrutiny, sadly showing it as generally tolerant and accepting, but in individual cases lacking and uncaring, unkind. The court scene where a distressed Reza is required by a chilly prosecutor to prove his claim of being homosexual is shocking. Then. Reza is packed into a van and taken to the airport to be sent back to Iran, even though Canada has rules against this particular death-resulting event.

[Spoiler alert] But that isn’t the end of the story. Léa Pool and Michel Marc Bouchard make you desperately want to have a happy ending, but that isn’t quite how life works out, is it? It is one of those truly satisfying stories that seem to have only two possible endings, but they find a third, surprise one. While you are trying to second guess the conclusion, they sneak up on you with a devastating ironic one. We can settle for infinite sadness rather than tragedy any day. The Happiness of the title would be good though, eh?

Canadian playwright Michel Marc Bouchard’s best-known play is Lilies, filmed by director John Greyson in 1996 as Lilies, in which a play is being performed in a prison by the inmates.

© Derek Winnert 2026 – Classic Movie Review 13,936

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