They’ve been together for the past 13 years, they’re successful professionals and they’ve relocated together from Munich to New York and on to London − now Dario and Markus want to start a family. In Germany, gay couples are not allowed to adopt children. The two men grapple with endless bureaucracy; lifted by hope and plagued by anxiety about what lies ahead. Franziska von Malsen accompanies Dario and Markus through this time of anticipation. She portrays the lives of a couple about to become parents − not, in the end, of a baby, but of a five year-old boy with a story of his own. HAPPY SERIOUS SAD relates how Dario and Markus gradually, sensitively come to embrace their son and his past.