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Cyril Aris

Cyril Aris

Directing

Biography

Cyril Aris is a Lebanese director and screenwriter, and a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences®. His first fiction feature, A Sad and Beautiful World (2025), premiered at the Venice Film Festival in Giornate Degli Autori, where it won the Audience Award. The film was selected as Lebanon’s official entry for Best International Feature Film at the 98th Oscars®. The film also screened at BFI London, Palm Springs, San Francisco IFF, and Seminci (Valladolid), winning the Audience Award, and received Best Screenplay at the Red Sea (Saudi Arabia), Best Score at Cinémed (Montpelier), the Grand Prize at Rencontres Cinématographiques in Cannes, Best Film at the Asian World (Los Angeles), Best Film at Tromsø FF (Norway), the Jury Prize at MedFilm (Rome), and Audience Awards in Barcelona, Florence, Ljubljana, Ottawa, Trondheim, among others. His documentary Dancing on the Edge of a Volcano (2023) premiered in competition at Karlovy Vary, and won a Jury Special Mention. It screened at BFI London, CPH:DOX and 80+ festivals worldwide. His debut feature The Swing (2018) also premiered at Karlovy Vary and won multiple international awards.

Known For

A Sad and Beautiful World
8.2

In this sweeping love story that spans three decades of passion, heartbreak, and hope, Nino and Yasmina find themselves drawn together by a magnetic relationship. As they face an impossible choice between love and survival, they must decide if they want to build a family and chart a path to happiness in Lebanon, despite the tragedies ravaging the country.

A Sad and Beautiful World

2025
Dancing on the Edge of a Volcano
6.0

On August 4th, 2020, the catastrophic explosion at the port of Beirut leaves a large part of the Lebanese capital in ruins. In the midst of the chaos, a troubled film crew face an overwhelming decision: to continue the production of their movie or abandon it? As they face the aftermath of the catastrophe, they are torn between their firm belief in the transformative power of cinema and a deep sense of cynicism about its ability to effect change in a nation plagued by economic turmoil and societal collapse. Dancing on the Edge of a Volcano chronicles their struggles and highlights the crew's resilience as they strive to find meaning and purpose in their work amidst the devastation.

Dancing on the Edge of a Volcano

2023
Costa Brava, Lebanon
6.6

Members of a family quit the polluted, rubbish-strewn city of Beirut for an idyllic mountain home. However, their dreams of a utopian existence are shattered by the construction of a landfill on the boundary of their land.

Costa Brava, Lebanon

2022
Death of Nintendo
6.4

The story takes us into the colorful pop-culture world of these four 13-year old friends, back in the days when video games were still a novelty. Mimaw and her friends Paolo, Kachi and Gilligan go on a journey of self-discovery together as they play games and wrestle with new dilemmas – puppy love, circumcision and other horror stories.

Death of Nintendo

2020
Submarine
5.0

Under the imminent threat of Lebanon's garbage crisis, Hala, a wild child inside of a woman, is the only one to refuse evacuation, clinging to whatever remains of home.

Submarine

2016
The President's Visit
4.0

When a small coastal town of fishermen learns about the secret visit of the President of the Republic to its local soap shop, they embark in an everlasting struggle at cleaning up and maintaining the perfect image of their town.

The President's Visit

2017
The Swing
8.3

An assured, emotionally rich film about the lies a family tells to keep their patriarch happy; and the unattended costs of their falsehood. After sixty years of marriage, Antoine and Vivi have lost their most beloved daughter; but no one has dared to tell the bedridden nonagenarian Antoine, lest his heart crack.

The Swing

2019
Beating Hearts
N/A

The Karantina Hospital houses one of only two paediatric departments in Lebanon. It is a safe haven for ill babies unable to get treatment elsewhere. In 2014, this ward was established via the charitable work of ASSAMEH Birth & Beyond. Sadly, on the 4th August 2020 the hospital was badly damaged in the Beirut port explosion forcing it to shut down and relocate to a temporary location. This short film takes us into the hospital a couple of months before the explosion to meet the staff and volunteers who work tirelessly to help sick and vulnerable children. Through their struggle and dedication, we see the fragility of the Lebanese healthcare system in relation to its weak economy and precarious work force as well as the altruism of the Lebanese people, offering glimmers of life to ill, sometimes neglected and hopeless, babies.

Beating Hearts

2020
Bahiya & Mahmoud
10.0

Aging couple Bahiya and Mahmoud have fallen into a reliable routine of bickering and making one another miserable until the morning that Mahmoud wakes and finds Bahiya gone.

Bahiya & Mahmoud

2011
No image
N/A

Biased or brave? Savior or culprit? When a man believes he’s about to save a young girl, he loses a part of himself.

A Good Man

2016