IFFK 2025 | A Sad and Beautiful World movie review: a romantic drama infused with life, energy and resilience

Nino and Yasmina occupy almost every frame in Lebanese filmmaker Cyril Aris’s debut feature A Sad and Beautiful World, just as expected in a romantic drama. It begins right from the opening sequence of their birth, a few minutes apart, in a hospital in Beirut. But by the end of the film, one gets a sense of what it is to be living in a region constantly mired in conflicts, where your life carefully built over decades can fall apart any moment.

Conflicts frame every major juncture in their life. The moment they open their eyes, the hospital in which they are admitted gets bombed, in a scene which immediately brings to mind the state of hospitals in present-day Gaza. Their childhood friendship is cut short by another spate of violent attacks from Israel. Decades later, they recognise each other amid a more local conflict between their family and friends.

But these violent events, which make a deep impression in our minds, appear on the screen only for a few fleeting moments. The rest of the time, we are immersed in the world of Nino and Yasmina, just like how they are immersed in each other’s worlds. It is what could have become a straightforward love story with all the usual conflicts that can happen in one. Yet, in Aris’s telling, it takes some exquisite turns in craft and narrative, which one would not normally expect from a debutant filmmaker.

Just like the house in Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value, another of the popular draws this year just like A Sad and Beautiful World, Nino’s restaurant in the film turns into a space that almost feels like a character, making us feel the beauty and weight of their decades of laughter and pain witnessed by the walls. For that matter, there is more laughter than one would expect from a film of this nature.

Contrasting characters

Nino falls back on his innate humour and exuberance to get over even the most insurmountable crisis, while Yasmina appears to know her way around the world in a more practical sense. It is therefore natural that Nino hangs on to the restaurant which his family had opened decades ago with a sense of nostalgia, while Yasmina, a corporate consultant, is ready to move to safer shores. Yet, for all their contrasting nature, at no point would anyone imagine these two ending up with anyone else.

Hasan Akil and Mounia Akl play the couple so convincingly that it feels like an extension of their own real-life personalities. Mounia is familiar to the audience at the International Film Festival of Kerala (IFFK) as the director of the superb ecological drama Costa Brava, Lebanon, which was screened here in 2022. Then there are remarkable characters like Nino’s chief chef who is particular that he will not let customers customise the dishes he made, not even letting them add a pinch of salt. Some of the most beautiful moments in the film belong to Nino’s and Yasmina’s childhood, with the young actors deserving a special mention.

Aris infuses what could have been just another romantic drama with so much life and energy that it is no wonder that A Sad and Beautiful World is one of the crowd favourites this year at the IFFK. The film is Lebanon’s official entry for the Best International Feature Film at the 98th Academy Awards.