A widow and a refugee in broken Beirut—some love stories start where everything else ends.
Suzanne and Osmane meet in crisis-ridden Beirut. Osmane is a young Sudanese man without papers, searching for a better future; Suzanne is a widow with Palestinian roots more than twice his age. Against all odds, they fall in love.
Acting
Hiam Abbass delivers another masterclass in restraint.
Direction
Arbid shoots Beirut as a character—exhausted, defiant, alive.
Director
Danielle Arbid
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Arbid filmed during Lebanon's 2019 economic collapse, embedding real protests into the narrative. The city's actual instability becomes inseparable from the characters' instability.
Abbass and Benrachid developed their characters' physical language for months—notice how Suzanne initiates touch while Osmane holds space, reversing typical age-gap dynamics.
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