‘A Sad and Beautiful World’ Venice Review: A Lebanese Love Story in Tumultuous Times

A classic love story, unfolding over decades, begins in a tone that’s at once humorous and absurd before gradually becoming denser and more painful with time. A Sad and Beautiful World is a somewhat more commercial film than what usually appears at festivals, yet even with its limitations, it remains remarkably valuable—not just for its central love story but also for how it captures the changes in the world the characters inhabit.

Nino (Hasan Akil) and Yasmina (Mounia Akl) collide—almost literally—as adults, when his car crashes into her family’s shop in a bizarre accident. At first, tensions run high: threats of legal action, money, and family chaos dominate the scene. But Nino, a skilled conversationalist who can usually coax laughter from those around him, manages to convince Yasmina—and especially her rigid mother—to “settle” the debt by inviting the entire family to his Beirut restaurant, which blends Lebanese cuisine with Italian touches.

The dinner turns into chaos, ending in a full-blown fight—the stubborn chef refuses to spice a recipe—but it is in this moment that Nino and Yasmina realize something they arguably should have recognized earlier: they were childhood sweethearts. Once deeply in love and on the verge of running away together, they lost touch as time passed, and now they reunite as adults, not only with their family dynamics in conflict but also as very different people.

A Sad and Beautiful World moves backward in time to reveal this past, but its focus remains on their reunion and the tentative romance that reignites, with all its twists, turns, and regrets. Yasmina plans to move to Berlin, aware that Lebanon is entering a period of crises, attacks, and widespread instability that will continue for years. Yet Nino’s magnetic pull keeps drawing her back again and again. Life continues, with a couple devoted to each other, striving to stay together while contending with social, political, and economic forces that repeatedly push them apart.

Aris frames the protagonists as two sides of the same coin representing Lebanon. Nino is nostalgic, clinging to a country that once seemed wonderful, while Yasmina is pragmatic, understanding that the future lies elsewhere. Between optimism and pessimism, hope and sadness, respect for tradition and the desire to reinvent themselves, this warm and ultimately topical story portrays the Lebanese drama through the lens of a love story set in a nation torn between hope and pain.