Mounia Akl on love, exile and Lebanon’s Oscar entry A Sad and Beautiful World

Better known as a director (Costa Brava Lebanon, more recently House of Guinness), Mounia Akl delivers an incredibly moving performance as lead character Yasmina in Cyril Aris’s A Sad and Beautiful World. The film is the official Oscars entry for Lebanon and premiered in the UK last month at the BFI London Film Festival.

Sentimental but not schmaltzy, it tells the epic love story of Yasmina and Nino — Hasan Akil — that spans three decades, against a backdrop of political and economic turmoil. Following the initial draft in 2019, the country was rocked by successive crises, including the financial crash, the port explosion, and Israeli aggression.

Despite moments of deep despair, the film is infused with a rousing sense of hope and joy. Yasmina and Nino grapple with heart-wrenching decisions over whether or not to leave or to bring children into this situation. The film speaks to so many Lebanese people who have faced the agonising dilemma of leaving their homeland in the last few years. Of course, for many of them, the choice is taken out of their hands. However, the film’s universal themes of life choices amidst an uncertain future and the resilience of love have appealed to international audiences. It has already garnered wide acclaim on the festival circuit.

We caught up with Mounia Akl who currently lives in London. We discussed her longstanding working relationship with Cyril, the chaos and beauty of shooting in Beirut, and her more recent directing experiences on House of Guinness, Boiling Point, and The Responder.