{"id":142025,"date":"2026-06-02T13:15:13","date_gmt":"2026-06-02T13:15:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/142025\/"},"modified":"2026-06-02T13:15:13","modified_gmt":"2026-06-02T13:15:13","slug":"happiness-arte-france-iran-series-is-deadlines-global-breakout","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/142025\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Happiness’: Arte France-Iran Series Is Deadline’s Global Breakout"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tWelcome to\u00a0Global Breakouts<\/a>, Deadline\u2019s strand in which, each fortnight, we shine a spotlight on the TV shows and films killing it in their local territories. The industry is as globalized as it\u2019s ever been, but breakout hits are appearing in pockets of the world all the time and it can be hard to keep track\u2026 So, we\u2019re going to do the hard work for you.<\/p>\n

\n\tHeadlines about conflict in Iran have dominated these past months but a small Franco-Iranian web series with big dreams tells a bit of a different story. Pouria Takavar<\/a>\u2018s American Honey<\/a>-inspired show Happiness<\/a>, which follows a group of reckless young teens trying to find their way in the world, started life on social media but was picked up by commissioners at Arte<\/a> and now has millions of views. Season 2 is on the horizon and can be seen at the Seriencamp festival in Cologne next week. <\/p>\n

\n\tName:\u00a0Happiness
Country:\u00a0France and Iran
Producer:\u00a0ARTE France, La Onda Productions
Distributor:\u00a0ARTE social media channels
For fans of:\u00a0American Honey<\/p>\n

\n\tIranian teenagers are defined by so much more than the place they are from, and they have the same dreams, hopes and expectations as the rest of us. <\/p>\n

\n\tThat notion is the driving force behind Happiness, a French-Iranian Arte short-form series many years in the making that places the spotlight on Iran and young Iranians, including those who have settled in other countries around the world, and sometimes gets a bit messy. <\/p>\n

\n\tThe second season of Happiness premieres next week at Seriencamp, five years after the first took the Cologne fest by storm and nearly a decade after the idea started germinating in the mind of director Pouria Takavar. It is a truly organic production, one that started with Takavar simply shooting footage of the teens around him and has now ramped up to become a hit for Arte, one of Europe\u2019s most trusted broadcasters. Season 1 amassed nearly five million views across Arte\u2019s VoD player, YouTube and Instagram page dedicated to short-form series.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe intention behind the show across both seasons has always been the fact that there are not many films and shows about Iranian teenagers,\u201d Takavar tells Deadline in the days before Seriencamp. \u201cHowever, I believe they are the most valuable people in the country. They are the ones who are about to make the future.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tTakavar had barely exited teenhood himself when he compiled what was to be the catapult for his career, a documentary profiling the 13, 14 and 15 year olds around him. \u201cThey weren\u2019t living a life like me, they were like Westeners,\u201d he explains. \u201cThey were smoking weed, drinking alcohol and getting tattoos. If you go and search you don\u2019t find much about Iranian teenagers but they have also been on the frontline of these revolutions we have had. So I saw a lot of potential in this and I started thinking about how we are all on a quest to find happiness.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tAmong those he filmed was a \u201chyperactive\u201d teen who \u201cwanted to be super happy but was going through a very hard time,\u201d and she inspired Takavar to create the main character of Shadi, whose name literally translates as \u201chappiness\u201d in Farsi. <\/p>\n

\n\tHe first created an Instagram series titled Tehrun, a play on words about those young bohemian folk who are desperate to leave Iran\u2019s capital, and this caught the eye of commissioners at Arte scouring Instagram for the next big thing. Tehrun slowly morphed into what was to become Happiness. <\/p>\n

\n\tStarring Ghazal Shojaei as Shadi alongside the likes of Solmaz Ghani, Yasmine Fattahi, Maryam Boubani, Steve Mege and Marie Seux, Happiness Season 1 followed Shadi on a roadtrip through Iran in search of her father. Season 2, which launches June 29, expands the aperture by moving to France, where Shadi has lived for six months and is still struggling to find her way between adaptation and loneliness, before she meets the Franco-Iranian Arezou\u00a0and starts to open up. <\/p>\n

\n\tIt has taken five years to get these two short-form seasons of Happiness over the line and events have continuously transpired to slow things down. <\/p>\n

\n\tThe first season was greenlit as the world entered Covid-19 and therefore took a long while to get in the can. The second was initially slated to be based in Tehran, where filming would have been on location, but then the Women, Life, Freedom revolution began following the death of Mahsa Amini, and things got tricky.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe didn\u2019t want to work with the government or have to get permits,\u201d adds Takavar. \u201cI didn\u2019t want to portray an image of girls with veils and hijabs on so it therefore became very risky to film in Iran. So we thought why not do a story about the first generation of migrants in France.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThat story was reflective of the experience of many of the people behind the Happiness camera, including Takavar, who currently lives in Dubai (he won\u2019t travel to Seriencamp as the last time he left Dubai his visa was nearly canceled) and who assembled a diverse writers\u2019 room including second generation Iranian migrants in France. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cA duty of memory\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\u2018Happiness\u2019<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tARTE France \u2013 La Onda Productions<\/p>\n

\n\tOne such up-and-coming scribe is Sonia Emamzadeh, who was hooked by how Happiness was so \u201cpop and colourful.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cUsually the movies about Iran that get to Europe or the U.S. are very heavy because it\u2019s in Iran and we know the situation,\u201d she says. \u201cBut you can tell a coming-of-age story about a girl rebelling against her mum and wondering about her absent dad anywhere. I absolutely loved it.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tEmamzadeh, a writer on French soap Ici Tout Commence who is also developing a series about an Iranian family making wine, believes Happiness is one of the first shows of its kind in France with a protagonist who is a first generation migrant. She says she was fascinated to \u201ctell the powerful story of Iranians that flee Iran to Europe\u201d and, in this way, Happiness is a \u201cduty of memory.\u201d \u201cI always think to myself what I am writing tells us about the era it\u2019s being written in,\u201d she says. \u201cThis is a testimony to what Iranians abroad are going through during this time.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tTowards the end of Season 2 filming last year, the 12-day war started raging between Iran and Israel and some parts of the final episodes were rewritten to take this into account. Since then, Iran has barely kept out the headlines amid the fall of Ayatollah Khameni and the blocking of the Strait of Hormuz.<\/p>\n

\n\tTakavar says he will be \u201cso sad\u201d if Iran\u2019s internet blackout prevents the nation\u2019s teens from watching Season 2. He lists Andrea Arnold\u2019s American Honey as an inspiration for Happiness but, ultimately, he says it all goes back to the teens he filmed for his very first documentary.<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd what next for Happiness? The team aren\u2019t planning anything beyond the premiere but Emamzadeh can\u2019t help but think big. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe dream scenario would be the fall of the Iranian regime, and coming back to film in Iran,\u201d she says. <\/p>\n

\n\tWe can all but hope. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Welcome to\u00a0Global Breakouts, Deadline\u2019s strand in which, each fortnight, we shine a spotlight on the TV shows and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":142026,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3],"tags":[46571,46572,46573,13216,34,46574],"class_list":["post-142025","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-iran","tag-american-honey","tag-arte","tag-global-breakouts","tag-happiness","tag-iran","tag-pouria-takavar"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116680702354665500","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142025","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=142025"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142025\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/142026"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}