General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Dark Hearts

Dark Hearts (French: Cœurs noirs) is a French action-war television series about a special forces commando unit deployed to Iraq in 2016 to fight the Islamic State, created by Duong Dang-Thaï and Corinne Garfin and first released on Amazon Prime Video in France on 3 February 2023.¹^•² It is the first co-production between France Télévisions and Amazon Prime Video, with Prime Video as the original broadcaster.² Two seasons of six episodes each were produced between 2023 and 2025.³

Key fact	Detail
Original title	Cœurs noirs; also known internationally as Black Hearts¹
Creators	Duong Dang-Thaï and Corinne Garfin, both co-writers on The Bureau²^•⁴
Format	Season 1: 6 × 52 minutes, directed by Ziad Doueiri; Season 2: 6 × 45 minutes, directed by Frédéric Jardin²^•³
Setting	Iraq, October 2016, on the eve of the Battle of Mosul; based on real events²
Broadcast	Prime Video France from 3 February 2023; France 2 from 22 January 2024; season 2 on Prime Video in 2025, then France Télévisions six months later²^•³
Production	Mandarin Télévision, producer Gilles de Verdière; filmed in Casablanca, Morocco; languages French, English, and Arabic¹^•²
Reception	7.8/10 on IMDb from about 2,300 ratings; the most-watched series on Amazon Prime Video France at its February 2023 launch¹^•⁴

Spoilers

Premise and season 1

The first season is set in October 2016, on the eve of the Battle of Mosul, when Iraqi forces backed by the United States sought to retake the city from ISIS. Martin Manzard (Nicolas Duvauchelle) leads Group 45, a French special forces commando, and is preparing to hand over command and return to Paris when his men capture Zaïd (Moussa Maaskri), a high-ranking French emir of Daesh. Zaïd will cooperate with French intelligence only on condition that the soldiers exfiltrate his daughter Salwa and grandson Yanis from the city.²^•⁴

The ensemble includes Marie Dompnier as Adèle Brockner, Nina Meurisse as sniper Sabrina Besson ("Sab"), Thierry Godard as Colonel Roques, Tewfik Jallab as Rimbaud, Jérémy Nadeau as Paco, Victor Pontecorvo as Spit, and Quentin Faure as Olivier Revel.² The season ends with the unit shaken by a combat death and Sabrina's abduction by an Islamic State unit, which sets up the second season.⁵

Season 2

Season 2 entered production on 15 April 2024 in Morocco, for six episodes of 45 minutes. It was written by Virginie Brac (Engrenages, Cheyenne et Lola) and directed by Frédéric Jardin (Braquo, Engrenages, Totems), replacing the season 1 creative team. The main cast returned, joined by Patrick Mille as a DGSE agent, along with Louis Séguier, Hugo Palomba, and Radouan Leflahi. The season aired exclusively on Prime Video in France in 2025, followed by France Télévisions six months later.³

The story follows Group 45's single objective: freeing their comrade Sab, held hostage by Daech. A Le Monde review noted that the second season, with the French military institution's cooperation, tilts toward efficiency and spectacle, and that the series avoids geopolitical consideration, keeping the focus on suspense rather than the morality of the 2015–2017 campaign against the Islamic State.⁵

Production and distribution

France Télévisions began developing the series, produced by Gilles de Verdière for Mandarin Télévision, in 2018; Amazon Prime Video joined later.² According to IMDb, the project was initially developed under "The Alliance", the co-production agreement between France Télévisions, Rai, and ZDF that had delivered series such as Mirage (2020) and Around the World in 80 Days (2021), before becoming a co-production between Amazon Prime Video and France Télévisions.¹ The first season received CNC support through the audiovisual support fund for preparation and production.⁶

Season 1 was an immediate critical and commercial success, becoming the most-watched series on Amazon Prime Video France when it launched in February 2023. Newen Connect, the distribution arm of Newen Studios (TF1 group), handles international sales and partnered with Amazon again for the second season.⁴ The series has streamed in more than 17 countries, including via the France Channel on The Roku Channel.⁷^•⁸ In the United Kingdom it is available on Apple TV, which describes it as an action drama about a French special forces commando capturing French Islamic State fighters outside Mosul in 2016.⁹

Other works titled Dark Hearts

The title has been used by several unrelated projects. The Dark Hearts is a six-episode television series in development by Amye Pictures, written by Frank Amye and adapted from his collection of psychological crime fictions, set in England and Ireland from 1991 to the present and centered on a decade-long organ trafficking investigation.¹⁰ A separate 2023 American drama series titled Dark Hearts (IMDb tt22311536), starring Eileen Grubba and Brian Gleason, deals with a family's ordeal when a child goes missing and with child trafficking.¹¹ Dark Hearts is also a 2014 American drama-thriller film directed by Rudolf Buitendach, starring Kyle Schmid, Sonja Kinski, and Lucas Till, about an artist whose romance with a singer becomes a game of deception and betrayal.¹² In publishing, Dark Hearts is a dark mafia romance audiobook series by Jagger Cole, beginning with Deviant Hearts (2025), performed by Ryan West and Sophie Daniels.¹³ In HBO's 2025 crime series Task, the Dark Hearts are an outlaw motorcycle gang whose mole inside the FBI task force drives the plot of the penultimate episode.¹⁴ A South African murder-mystery series pitch titled Dark Hearts (ZDF Enterprises, MNet, and Quizzical), about an investigative journalist drawn into her brother's murder, was in development around 2020 with a planned shoot in Cape Town and Johannesburg.¹⁵

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Series and fictional screen worlds › Scripted television and comedy series › Drama and prestige series (individual series) › Historical and period drama

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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