Writers: Cyril Aris and Bane Fakih
Director: Cyril Aris
Two babies borh within a minute of one another during a bombardment in Beirut and a few decades later the are destined for one another. Cyril Aris and Bane Fakih’s film A Sad and Beautiful World is a sorrowful love letter to a city that the filmmakers perceive as stuck in a cycle of repetitive history. I don’t want to live the same life as my parents, protagonist Yasmina declares, but in this bittersweet love story her inability to give up the man of her dreams exactly aligns with the love of the city Charting the couples quite different perspective on the world they believe in, Aris and Fakih ask not only whether love is enough but, when it comes to nation, how do you know when to throw in the towel?
Born at the same moment and becoming childhood friends, Nino declares his love for Yasmina aged seven in a railway carriage before she is taken away by her mother following a relationship breakdown. Years late, a freak accident causes Nino (Hasan Akil) to crash into the window of her family shop and in trying to figure out the damage, meets Yasmina (Mounia Aki) again. A great love story begins but life in Beirut for a newly in love couple is complicated and, as the years pass, the compromises they make for each other start to pull them apart.
The movie starts as a light rom com, a sweet tale of opposites attracting and inevitably overcoming their obstacles to find one another. Characterisation is strong with both the leads nicely drawn. Nino is the eternal optimist, relentlessly happy and positive with a certainty that attracts Yasmina even during an inevitable airport chase. Yasmina is cynical, a businesswoman who doesn’t want love or children, yet she is charmed by Nino and starts to accept their difference may be good for her, yielding to the happy life he imagines for them. It’s strong work and much of the film’s success rests in these performances.
Aris and Fakih also have strong control of the aftermath, so when the rom com crescendo is done, the consequences of their life together and how that changes is well managed especially when A Sad and Beautiful World draws back to consider how similar this relationship becomes to their parents, and how the cycles of conflict in Beirut pulls at the life they have built and their wider friendship group. The latter segment does feel over-extended however with multiple ending points and opportunities for Yasmina and Nino to make the same choice all over again; the point is well made by this time.
Personal lives against a backdrop of conflict are a strong substance for drama, particularly when love crosses a divide – here a philosophical one rather than religious or national boundaries. And A Sad and Beautiful World depicts the positives and beauty of Beirut, a once vibrant city damaged by war as depicted through the fortunes of Nino’s family restaurant now abandoned by customers as life in the capital becomes less certain. Stay or go, the question for Yasmina and Nino is can love be enough to sustain the course.
A Sad and Beautiful World is screening at the BFI London Film Festival 2025 from 8-19 October.
