And, Towards Happy Alleys Shares Its Creator’s Passion and Sparks the Audience’s

While in university, filmmaker Sreemoyee Singh discovered the work of Iranian artist Frough Farrokhzad, a pioneering feminist poet and filmmaker. Falling in love with Farrokhzad’s work led Singh to seek out and fall in love with Iranian art and culture. This, in turn, led her to learn Persian and visit Iran, initially for her Ph.D. Over seven years and multiple visits, Singh filmed the documentary And, Towards Happy Alleys, which screened in April as part of Austin’s 2025 Indie Meme Festival, is electric. It’s a thoughtful look not only at artists and activists living and working in Iran and dealing with its theocratic regime.

And, Towards Happy Alleys traces Singh, who operates the camera in addition to directing and conducting interviews, as she travels Iran and meets with, among others, human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh and filmmaker Jafar Panahi. Some of these meetings are formal interviews, and others involve Singh and her subjects speaking casually, as is the case for a lengthy conversation with Panahi on a long drive. While Singh does not include any direct run-ins with Iranian law enforcement in the film proper, the regime and its agents are a constant presence. She shuts off her camera several times when someone notices her filming. Singh spoke with Sotoudeh shortly before she was arrested in 2018. Panahi would be arrested in 2022. One of Singh’s interviewees quips that his neighbor has an uncanny ability to start working on loud, distracting home maintenance projects whenever he wants to discuss a topic the regime would not approve of. 

Throughout And, Toward Happy Alleys’ 75 minutes, Singh engages her subjects on why they do what they do, what moves them to do so, and how they navigate their callings, from activism to filmmaking, in an often extremely hostile environment. Singh’s passion for Iranian art is evident in the insightful questions she asks and the folks she seeks out to interview, such as former child actor Aida Mohammadkhani, who appears in Panahi’s The White Balloon. In another case, she visits the home of legendary filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami, but opts not to knock on his door, and ultimately does not get to speak to him before his death in 2016.

Singh’s curiosity and passion propel the film forward. Through her interviews, she assembles a portrait of how creativity intersects with activism, the act of living, and the necessity of doing both in an authoritarian regime. Through her narration, she lays out not only her infectious passion for Iranian art but also how that passion shapes her creative work and how, in turn, it shapes her passion. She’s a compelling narrator, a skillful interviewer, and an excellent documentarian.

And, Toward Happy Alleys was born from how Iranian art sparked Sreemoyee Singh’s passion. Her work does the same. It’s a call to get curious, to pick up the baton, to watch Panahi, to read Farrokhzad and their predecessors, peers, and successors. It’s a call to, to paraphrase Farrokhzad, blend with Singh’s ardor and the fire the artists she loves poured into her work. It’s terrific. Any opportunity to see it should be seized. 

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