𝙻𝚘𝚟𝚎 𝚂𝚝𝚘𝚛𝚢 𝚒𝚗 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚂𝚑𝚊𝚍𝚘𝚠 𝚘𝚍 𝚆𝚊𝚛

An Interview with Cyril Aris about

A Sad and Beautiful World

Interview by Narges Samadi

Introduction

At first glance, A Sad and Beautiful World appears to be another film about war. It opens with explosions, sirens, and the birth of two children in a Beirut hospital. Within minutes, however, it becomes clear that the film is interested in something far more intimate than the battlefield itself.

Rather than depicting combat, director Cyril Aris explores how decades of violence quietly shape everyday life—love, family, memory, and the emotional lives of ordinary people. Beirut is not merely a backdrop but a living presence, carrying the weight of generations who have learned to survive through recurring wars and crises.

In this conversation, Aris reflects on inherited trauma, the visual language of the film, the role of Beirut as both city and character, and the ways love continues to endure even when history refuses to let go.

Narges Samadi

Before we begin, I wanted to say how deeply I admired the visual language of the film.

Although A Sad and Beautiful World is rooted in war, it never adopts the conventional grammar of war cinema. Violence is always present, yet it remains in the background. Instead, your camera stays remarkably close to everyday life, allowing us to experience how war gradually enters people’s relationships rather than simply their cities.

For me, the film is not about war itself, but about the emotional consequences of living with it across generations.

Cyril Aris

Thank you so much.

I’m very happy you noticed that because it was exactly the intention from the beginning.

I never wanted to make a traditional war film. I wanted to tell the story of a couple—a love story—but one that could only exist in Lebanon.

War is constantly present, yet it is never the film’s subject. Instead, it shapes every decision the characters make. It affects where they live, whether they leave, how they love, and ultimately whether they can remain together.

That was the guiding principle I set for myself while writing the film.

Rather than explaining the political causes of the conflict, I wanted to explore its human and social consequences.

When a country experiences war, economic collapse, or political crisis, one of the first things to begin falling apart is often the family itself.

Yasmin receives an opportunity to leave Lebanon and build a new life abroad.

Nino refuses to leave because he believes he must stay and continue building something in his own country.

That conflict is not simply a romantic dilemma; it exists because of the country’s political reality.

Ultimately, the film is about showing how war quietly transforms ordinary life and intimate relationships rather than focusing on the battlefield itself.

Part Two — Living with an Inherited War

Narges Samadi

One of the aspects that moved me most was that the film never treats war as a single historical event. Instead, it feels like a chronic condition—one that is passed from one generation to the next.

As the story unfolds, we gradually understand how childhood shapes both Nino and Yasmin. Although Nino loses his parents to the violence of war, he grows up surrounded by extraordinary love. His grandfather raises him through poetry, music, cooking, and affection, transforming grief into something almost magical.

That emotional education gives him the strength to remain hopeful despite everything he has lost.

Yasmin, by contrast, grows up inside another kind of war—a war unfolding within her own home.

For me, the film suggests that our deepest wounds are inherited not only through history, but also through the way we are loved—or deprived of love—during childhood.

Was this contrast something you consciously wanted to explore?

Cyril Aris

Absolutely.

One of the central ideas of the film is that trauma does not disappear when a war ends. It is passed from one generation to the next.

In Lebanon, every generation has lived through a major war or profound national crisis.

Whether it was my grandparents’ generation, my parents’, or my own, each inherited a different form of violence.

I was born toward the end of the Lebanese Civil War, so I never experienced that conflict directly.

But I grew up living with its consequences.

The fears, the divisions, the sectarian tensions—they were all passed down to us, even though they were not our own experiences.

It took many years for my generation to realize that we had inherited traumas that did not originally belong to us.

That realization became one of the foundations of the film.

This is why the story repeatedly returns to childhood.

Everything that happens to Nino and Yasmin as children quietly shapes the adults they eventually become.

Nino’s grandfather is especially important because he represents another way of responding to suffering.

Instead of allowing death to become only a source of pain, he transforms it into imagination.

He tells Nino that his parents now exist somewhere beautiful—somewhere beyond violence.

He chooses poetry over fear.

He chooses stories over despair.

Through cooking, music, and love, he teaches Nino how to survive emotionally.

Yasmin experiences the opposite.

The violence surrounding her does not come primarily from outside.

It exists within her own family.

She grows up trapped between her parents, constantly surrounded by conflict and the fear of death.

These two childhoods create two very different personalities.

Nino becomes joyful, impulsive, optimistic, and full of energy.

Yasmin becomes cautious, pragmatic, and emotionally guarded.

But as the film progresses, we discover that these personalities are also masks.

Nino’s optimism conceals an unresolved grief he has never fully confronted.

Yasmin’s realism, meanwhile, becomes the very quality that enables her to endure reality.

In many ways, each possesses what the other lacks.

On a broader level, I believe Lebanon has behaved very much like Nino.

After the Civil War, the country chose optimism over confrontation.

We celebrated life.

We kept moving forward.

But we never truly acknowledged what had happened.

We buried history beneath everyday life.

The problem is that history never disappears.

If trauma remains unacknowledged, it eventually returns.

For me, Nino ultimately becomes a metaphor for Lebanon itself—a country that desperately wants to move forward without first confronting its own past.

Part Four — Birth, Radio Waves, and the Coexistence of Beauty and Violence

Narges Samadi

Several moments at the beginning of the film stayed with me long after it ended.

The first is the sound of radio frequencies searching for a signal.

As someone trying to learn about Lebanon before watching the film, that opening felt strangely familiar. It reminded me of someone moving from one station to another, searching through fragments of history, political voices, news reports, and memories in an attempt to understand a country whose past is difficult to grasp.

Then, without warning, the explosion arrives.

For a brief moment, the audience believes they are about to watch a conventional war film.

Instead, you immediately shift to birth.

The image of two babies entering the world at the same moment, surrounded by violence, struck me deeply.

It feels as though the film is telling us that love and war, hope and destruction, are born together.

Could you talk about how you conceived that opening?

Cyril Aris

That’s a beautiful reading.

Interestingly, the radio sequence wasn’t originally in the screenplay.

It emerged through conversations with my sound designer.

Originally, the film simply began with the birth.

She suggested that beginning directly with childbirth might feel too abrupt, and that the audience first needed a way to enter the world of the film.

At first, we worried that the radio broadcasts would feel too specifically Lebanese.

Many international viewers wouldn’t recognize the voices or the programs.

But eventually we realized that recognition wasn’t the point.

The experience was.

The sensation of searching through countless voices—news reports, political speeches, advertisements, entertainment programs, and everyday conversations—became a metaphor for life during a prolonged crisis.

When a country is at war, or living through continuous instability, you never really escape the news.

Someone nearby always has the television on.

The radio is playing.

Your phone keeps delivering alerts.

Wherever you turn, information surrounds you.

That constant bombardment creates a permanent state of anxiety.

We wanted the audience to experience that emotional condition before seeing a single image.

If you listen carefully, you’ll notice that the broadcasts are not only about war.

There are also game shows, entertainment programs, and advertisements.

Life goes on.

Ordinary routines continue.

That contradiction was essential because the film constantly tries to hold joy and sorrow together.

The title itself—A Sad and Beautiful World—contains that contradiction.

Those two emotions are never separated.

Narges Samadi

That duality is exactly what affected me.

The film never asks us to choose between hope and despair.

Instead, the two exist simultaneously.

Even the birth scene feels both miraculous and terrifying.

Cyril Aris

Exactly.

The birth scene was inspired by something very personal.

The actress who plays Yasmin was herself born in Beirut in 1989 during shelling.

Her mother had to be moved from her hospital room into a hallway because it was considered safer if the windows exploded.

That extraordinary story stayed with me for years.

I wanted to transform it into cinema.

Then reality repeated itself.

During the Beirut Port explosion in August 2020, images emerged of another woman giving birth while the hospital itself was being devastated.

Those images became part of our collective visual memory while we were making the film.

This is also why Yasmin later says she is afraid of bringing children into this world.

That fear isn’t abstract.

It comes from lived experience.

Narges Samadi

Although you were born after the Lebanese Civil War, you’ve lived through repeated wars and national crises.

Did those experiences shape your relationship with this story?

Cyril Aris

Very much.

I didn’t experience the Civil War directly.

But I experienced almost everything that came after it.

The 1996 conflict.

The 2006 war.

Political assassinations.

The Beirut Port explosion.

The economic collapse.

More recent wars.

Every generation in Lebanon believes it has reached the end of history, only to discover that another crisis is already beginning.

Living through that cycle inevitably shapes the way you see the world.

It also shapes the stories you feel compelled to tell.

For me, A Sad and Beautiful World is not simply about remembering the past.

It’s about understanding how history quietly continues to inhabit the present, influencing the choices we make, the relationships we build, and the futures we imagine.