نجوم الأمل و الألم (2025)

Nino and Yasmina are children who attend the same class at school. After they each get into trouble there and their parents are still angry with them, they run away together. A close friendship develops between them. When Yasmina says she wants to run away from home, Nino confesses that he loves her. They decide to disappear together and arrange to meet at night by an abandoned train. Yasmina climbs out of her window at home, but a fireworks display startles her and reminds her of the sounds of war. She hides in a street corner, where her parents find her. Twenty-five years later, Nino runs his restaurant, “Chez Nino,” and Yasmina works for a consulting company. They have had no contact since childhood. Nino is driving through Beirut when, suddenly, sheets of paper and books fly onto his windshield. He loses control of the car and crashes into the office where Yasmina’s mother works. To apologize, Nino invites Yasmina’s entire family to his restaurant, and he and Yasmina immediately get along well again despite their long separation. Yasmina is stressed by her job, however, so Nino has to do a lot of persuading to get her to meet him again. He invites her to an engagement party he is hosting at his restaurant. That evening, all of Nino’s employees are unavailable, and Yasmina agrees to help out. They fall in love again, but Yasmina is about to be transferred to Germany. At the airport, however, she changes her mind and unexpectedly turns up at Nino’s doorstep. After Nino and Yasmina have been a couple for six months, Nino proposes to her at a party with friends. Yasmina interrupts him and immediately pulls him aside. She tells him that she is pregnant but does not want to have a child. She considers living conditions in Lebanon unbearable and says she herself was not loved by her divorced parents. Nino struggles to process this information, as he would actually be happy to have a child. A few years later, Nino and Yasmina are still a couple in Beirut and have a daughter together. Because of the economic crisis, Nino has no customers left at his restaurant, and the Beirut branch of Yasmina’s company is going to close. Yasmina is trying to get transferred to Dubai, while Nino is taking care of a plot of land in the countryside in order to open a guesthouse for tourists. Because they have different goals, the two can no longer find common ground, and Nino fears that he will be left.