A Sad and Beautiful World

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Movie Info & Cast

Release Date:

Jul 24, 2026

Runtime:

1hr 50m

Synopsis

Across three decades, Nino and Yasmina are bound by a magnetic relationship. Torn between love and survival, they must decide whether to build a family in Lebanon, or leave their home amid the country's unfolding tragedies.
Moviegoers are saying
A poetic Lebanese love story that captivates viewers with its lyrical storytelling and devastating chemistry between leads, though it deeply divides audiences over its treatment of female agency and generational trauma. Critics praise the fluid time jumps and intimate portrayal of exile, but some feel betrayed by narrative choices that seemingly abandon the heroine's explicitly stated boundaries around motherhood and bringing children into an unstable world.
Top Mentions
Star-Crossed
Emotionally-Devastating
Poetic-Realism
War-Torn-Romance
Generational-Trauma
Exile-Story
Summary generated from the text of Atom User reviews

Letterboxd User Reviews

3.9
11.1K
3.2K
4.2K
RATINGS 191 FANS
3.9
  • Oct 7, 2025

    Deeply romantic, but grounded in the truth that the things that draw you to a person can also be the things that push you away. Handles the time jumps really elegantly. The whole thing is so fluid and lyrical and lovely, always making sure to keep our couple front and…

    313 Likes
    Chloe
    Chloe
    Dec 10, 2025

    Unbelievable work all around very impressive. Loved it.

    274 Likes
    A76
    A76
    Oct 11, 2025

    You have to bounce on it crazy style 10 times to have kids? I mean, I'll try

    237 Likes
    _modino
    _modino
  •
    Mar 22, 2026

    I was fully on board with this until that one major time-skip. I thought it was such a cowardly shortcut to avoid addressing the dilemma that plagued the couple, one that overwhelmingly concerns Yasmina. The moment she says “I will not give this world another child to…

    189 Likes
    vee
    vee
    Sep 27, 2026

    Some loves don’t fall apart because the people stop loving each other. sometimes the very things that make you love someone are what make staying impossible. A Sad and Beautiful World makes exile feel painfully intimate: leaving behind your streets, your family, your…

    103 Likes
    Didem
    Didem
    Feb 22, 2026

    TW Dubai mentioned

    136 Likes
    Oumaya
    Oumaya
  •
    May 30, 2026

    Hold on tight... the train is gonna departure soon... from slow to fast... bring you to the island where there will be no more war and loud noises, there will only be peace, quite and have an unlimited electricity.

    115 Likes
    Vin.
    Vin.
    Jul 22, 2026

    At the exact minute that baby Nino first came into this world, a rocket erupted through the walls of the Beirut hospital where his mother had just given birth — it was 5:05 p.m. Down the hall, just a few seconds later, a different woman gave birth to a little girl named…

    112 Likes
    davidehrlich
    davidehrlich
    May 24, 2026

    an essential love story that understands attraction and incompatibility are often the same things, and the way the timeline moves, the way memory does, not chronologically but by feeling, with each moment arriving when it needs to rather than when it happened and through…

    105 Likes
    parzival!
    parzival!

Queue Community Reviews

100%
Community 28
❤️ LOVE
67%
👍 LIKE
33%
😐 MEH
0%
👎 DISLIKE
0%
Top Reviews
  • laia
    laia liked
    A Sad and Beautiful World

    es bonita pero no estoy de acuerdo con el “mensaje”

    4M

Atom Users Reviews

No one has posted a user review yet.

Metacritic

72
metacritic
Based on 8 Critics
tbd

USER SCORE (0)

There are no user reviews yet
67
Jul 29, 2026

Despite the prescriptive nature of its framing, however, A Sad and Beautiful World ultimately wrestles with a question that neither of its characters will ever have the luxury of answering for themselves: Is it easier to love without hope, or to hope without love? Nino and Yasmina have always been bound together by that uncertainty, and the open-ended final moments of this movie leave us desperate to believe that they always will be.

David Ehrlich
IndieWire
70
Jul 29, 2026

War-torn romances are nothing new, but in Mr. Aris’s story it’s not the shattered buildings that constitute the real wreckage.

Metacritic review by Kyle Smith
Kyle Smith
Wall Street Journal
90
Jul 23, 2026

Aris manages to infuse both perspectives, Nino’s and Yasmina’s, into the film, which is funny, even joyous, without discounting the darkness that lives just outside (and sometimes inside) the walls of its characters’ homes.

Metacritic review by Alissa Wilkinson
Alissa Wilkinson
The New York Times

Frequently Asked Questions

How long is A Sad and Beautiful World (2026)?
The movie is 1hr 50min long.
What's A Sad and Beautiful World (2026) about?
Across three decades, Nino and Yasmina are bound by a magnetic relationship. Torn between love and survival, they must decide whether to build a family in Lebanon, or leave their home amid the country's unfolding tragedies.