Watching a film feels almost routine for most of us: a random weekday evening, a lazy weekend plan, or the full cinema setup with popcorn and dim lights. But while the ritual itself rarely changes, the feeling afterwards always does. Some films stay with you long after the credits roll. Others disappear almost instantly.

And more often than not, that difference comes down to the person behind the camera.

Today, we are speaking to exactly such a person — Mounia Akl, Lebanese filmmaker, screenwriter and visual storyteller. From films screened at the Cannes Film Festival, Venice Film Festival, the Toronto International Film Festival and the BFI London Film Festival to television projects connected to Netflix and the BBC, Akl’s work moves between deeply personal storytelling and emotional realities that often feel uncomfortably close to real life. Most recently, she even stepped onto the other side of the camera herself as an actress in The Sad and Beautiful World.

But no more spoilers for now.

So, here we go — a conversation with Mounia Akl.

— Before studying filmmaking at Columbia University, you once said you “studied cinema on the street”. What did you mean by that?

— When I was growing up in Lebanon, I was studying architecture, even though I had always wanted to become a filmmaker. But at the time, cinema didn’t feel like a particularly reassuring path to follow in a country where the film industry was still almost non-existent. So I convinced myself to do the “safe” thing instead and study architecture. My parents are architects too, so it felt like the logical choice.

Still, I became increasingly frustrated by the feeling that I wasn't really doing what I loved. So on weekends, I would make films with a very close friend of mine. That became our version of film school. We taught ourselves everything through books, summer workshops, and endless experimentation with a VHS camera. We did the sound, the camera work, acted inside the stories ourselves.

Slowly, people started noticing those little films we were making, and eventually a couple of producers asked us to turn one of the shorts into a web series. Looking back, the work was probably clumsy in many ways because we were still learning, both narratively and cinematically. But I think those films had innocence and sincerity, and that is what people connected to.

In many ways, that is how I truly learned filmmaking. I would cast family members and friends, ask friends with a strong sense of style to become costume designers, bring architecture classmates into the process, and slowly build creative teams out of the people around me. Long before Columbia gave me the formal structure of filmmaking, I was already learning through instinct, collaboration, and simply making things with whatever — and whoever — we had around us.

— How did your parents react when you decided to move abroad and study filmmaking?

— I think my parents encouraged me to have a safety plan at first, but not in the cliché “don’t do art, become a doctor” sort of way. It was much more thoughtful than that. There are many artists in my family: my uncle was a pianist, one of my aunts is a painter, another is an opera singer. So my parents had seen very closely what a creative life can look like — both the beauty of it and the instability that can sometimes come with it.

Because of that, they wanted me to be certain this was truly what I wanted. They understood the amount of work, sacrifice and persistence a creative career demands. At the same time, they also knew I genuinely loved architecture, so they never saw those years as wasted, more as something that would enrich me later on. They always told me that if filmmaking still felt right afterwards, they would support me at the Masters stage, and that architecture would only deepen the way I see and understand the world.

And honestly, they were right. Architecture still shapes the way I think as a filmmaker — through space, history, visual thinking, even the way I approach storytelling itself. My parents always believed it was important not to become just one thing, but to be shaped by different disciplines, experiences and ways of looking at life.

So by the time I finished architecture and had already started building a small filmmaking career through the projects I was making, my father became incredibly supportive of the move to New York. Both he and my mother really wanted me to experience life abroad and grow outside the family nest. I think, in his eyes, I had taken the time to understand what I truly wanted, and because of that, I could finally give myself fully to it.

— How does your architecture background influence the way you make films today?

— Architecture shaped the way I think far beyond aesthetics alone. In architecture school, I had wonderful teachers who really taught me how to take an idea from its very first conception through to its evolution and, eventually, its execution. And that process is incredibly long in architecture because an idea can't simply remain abstract or philosophical — in the end, it has to become a real space that people can physically exist in.

I actually think filmmaking works in a very similar way. Both disciplines are deeply artistic, but also extremely technical at the same time. You are constantly balancing vision with practicality, while also learning how to communicate ideas clearly to an entire team. A huge part of architecture school was about pitching ideas, collaborating with others, and finding ways to transform something imagined into something tangible. Those are all skills I still use every day in filmmaking.

Architecture also completely changed the way I think about characters and world-building. I naturally tend to think about people through the spaces they inhabit — their rooms, their homes, the atmosphere around them. Whether I am building the bedroom of a character or the entire world of a film, I feel I approach it with a deeper sensitivity because of those years studying architecture. In many ways, it really enriched me as a filmmaker.

— There is a long-standing idea that artists need to suffer in order to create meaningful work. Do you personally relate to that, or do you think creativity can also come from emotionally healthier places?

— I think strong emotions — whether joyful or painful — are often what push me towards writing. Anxiety, melancholy, excitement, heartbreak, even happiness: those are usually the moments that create movement internally and make me feel the need to transform something into words or images. What tends to block me creatively is numbness. When I feel emotionally shut down or disconnected from myself, that is usually when writing becomes impossible.

At the same time, I don’t necessarily believe trauma can instantly become art. Very often, when something difficult is happening in real time, you are simply trying to survive it emotionally rather than process it creatively.

For example, after the Beirut explosion, I couldn't imagine writing about it at all. The experience itself felt far more important and overwhelming than any film or script. Usually, I need distance from something before I can even begin to understand whether I want to transform it into fiction.

Even with Costa Brava, Lebanon, part of the emotional foundation of the film came from experiences I lived through when I was fourteen, but I only felt ready to explore those emotions creatively much later, around the age of twenty-eight. And even then, fiction slowly takes over. At some point, the film stops being autobiography and becomes something else entirely

— Costa Brava, Lebanon touches on very sensitive subjects connected to Lebanon’s political reality and the waste crisis. Were you ever afraid of addressing those themes so directly?

— Honestly, while making the film, I wasn't really thinking about fear in that way. When you are deeply inside a project, your focus narrows entirely to the film itself, the team around you, and the world you are trying to build. And in a way, if you constantly think about censorship or possible consequences while writing, you end up paralysing yourself creatively. You would never actually make anything.

At the same time, speaking about the garbage crisis in Lebanon didn’t feel like exposing some hidden truth. It was simply the reality we were all living through at that moment. There was so much anger surrounding the way people’s lives and environments were being damaged by corruption, and for me it became impossible not to put some of that anger somewhere.

Of course, I knew the film could create certain issues. My short film Submarine had already faced censorship problems before, so I was aware of that possibility. But I never felt that my life was directly under threat because of the script itself. As a filmmaker, I try not to self-censor too much, because otherwise I wouldn't feel honest in the stories I am telling.

What none of us expected, however, was the Beirut explosion happening while we were in pre-production. That was the real shock.

— So all of this was happening during 2020, around the time of the Beirut explosion?

— Yes. We were in pre-production for Costa Brava, Lebanon in 2020 when the August 4 Beirut port explosion happened. We were all preparing the film, and suddenly the entire office exploded around us. Everything just stopped afterwards for a couple of months.

There is actually a documentary called Dancing on the Edge of a Volcano that captures part of that period. What is interesting is that it was never originally meant to be a documentary about our film team specifically. The director was filming different artists and people across Lebanon who were all trying to process the trauma of that moment in their own ways.

But little by little, his camera naturally drifted towards our team trying to continue making a film while living through all of this. And somehow, without anyone really planning it, Costa Brava became part of that larger story too.

— Costa Brava, Lebanon isn't directly biographical, but it clearly carries something very personal. Were any of the characters inspired by people from your own life?

— Growing up, it was me, my mother, my father and my older sister. She is five years older than me, and she has always been one of my closest people, really one of my main pillars in life. That age gap between us was always fascinating to me because she was constantly entering a new stage of life before I did.

When I was ten, she was already becoming a teenager. By the time I became a teenager myself, she was moving into adulthood. So there was always this feeling that she had entered a world slightly ahead of me, and I was quietly trying to catch up to it.

That dynamic became one of the emotional starting points for the two sisters in Costa Brava. I was interested in how two girls at completely different ages experience the breaking apart of a family differently. When your family is your entire world, a little girl and a teenage girl will naturally respond to that rupture in very different ways.

I also liked the idea of these quiet “clans” forming inside the family: the older daughter gravitating towards the mother, while the younger girl becomes almost inseparable from the father. My co-writer Clara brought a lot into that relationship as well. She grew up as the older sister, while I was the younger one, so naturally she poured much of herself into the older daughter, while I recognised more of myself in the younger girl.

At the same time, none of the characters are direct portraits of real people. The little girl isn't exactly me, the older sister isn't exactly my sister, and the parents aren't exactly my parents either. Each character became a mixture of different people, memories and emotional experiences.

I can recognise parts of myself in all of them — in the little girl, in the mother’s tendency to isolate herself at times as a filmmaker, and even in the father’s anxiety and need to protect his family. Trauma and PTSD can make people very controlling of their environment, and that was something I understood emotionally as well.

So in a way, every character carries fragments of me, but also fragments of many people I love. And naturally, because the film is rooted in Lebanon, each of them also reflects a different way of dealing with fear, family, rupture and the reality of the country itself.

— At one point, the film had already premiered internationally but hadn't yet been shown publicly in Lebanon. What was the reaction from Lebanese audiences once they finally saw it?

— The screening in Lebanon was definitely the most important one. Of course, travelling with the film was exciting. We showed it in Venice, Toronto and many other places, and it was fascinating to watch how different cultures connected to the story in completely different ways.

But Lebanon was different because it was home. It was where we made the film, where the team came from, and where the emotional reality of the story itself was rooted. Nothing really compares to showing a film to people who understand its political and emotional landscape from the inside.

We organised a large screening with my family, friends, the film crew, and all of their families and friends as well. It was incredibly moving. And of course, with cinema, you never fully know how each person will respond. Some people may love the film, others may not, and that is part of the experience of making art. But for me personally, meeting the audience that night was really beautiful.

What I loved most was the way the film opened conversations. People debated the country, the family dynamics, the choices the characters make, the different ways of dealing with Lebanon itself. And one thing many people connected with very strongly was the little girl. She was played by twins, and somehow they became the emotional centre of that screening. There was something about the way they carried the room that really stayed with people.

— Submarine was your first major short film. What did that project mean to you at the time?

— Submarine was my thesis film at Columbia University in New York. After four years of studying and experimenting with many different ways of using the camera, it became the final short film I made before leaving film school. The story itself was also centred around the garbage crisis in Lebanon.

And honestly, out of everything I had made at that point, Submarine was the film that felt the closest to my actual vision as a filmmaker. There is always a gap between the film you imagine in your head and the one you finally manage to make. But with Submarine, that gap felt smaller than ever before. It was probably the first time I truly recognised myself in my own work.

I am still very proud of that film because, in many ways, it marked the beginning of a second stage in my career. It became a sort of business card for me. The film went to Cannes, and very suddenly a lot of attention was placed on my work. It introduced me to people who probably wouldn’t have discovered me otherwise, and it also pushed me to write Costa Brava, Lebanon much faster, because that feature really grew out of the emotional and political world of Submarine.

At that moment in life, when you are just coming out of film school and stepping into the real world, everything feels slightly uncertain and intimidating. Having a short film that genuinely represents you becomes incredibly important. Submarine allowed me to say: this is who I am as a filmmaker right now.

— I know that apart from directing films, you recently also tried yourself as an actress in The Sad and Beautiful World. What was it like suddenly stepping onto the other side of the camera, and did that experience change the way you think as a director?

— Honestly, it was amazing, but very frightening at first. I found it difficult to trust myself enough to do it, so I relied heavily on the director’s confidence in me. I kept thinking: “Maybe I can do this because he believes I can,” since acting was never something I truly saw as part of my professional identity.

I acted a little when I was younger, but only as a hobby. Professionally, I am so used to being behind the camera that suddenly becoming visible felt very strange. I realised how much I enjoy invisibility. Over the years, I have actually become more uncomfortable with public exposure — red carpets, events, constantly being looked at. It isn’t because I dislike fashion or any of that. I think I just have a certain social anxiety around physically putting myself out there.

So my biggest fear was becoming too self-conscious. As an actor, you can't constantly think about how you look or how you are being perceived. You have to let go of that completely. For me, the only way to do it was to stop controlling everything. I never looked at the monitor, not once. I just decided: “Okay, I am Yasmina now.” I would trust the director, trust the costume designer, trust the cinematographer, and simply exist inside the character instead of observing myself from the outside.

And honestly, once I let go, something shifted. I loved the script so much that it became easier to stay emotionally present. Hassan Akil, who I acted alongside, is such a generous and grounded actor that very quickly it stopped feeling performative and started feeling natural. I forgot about many of the things that had initially frightened me.

In the end, the experience became much bigger than simply acting in a film. It taught me to be less afraid of uncertainty and less obsessed with control. It also came at a very emotional moment because I had deeply missed filming in Lebanon. For the previous few years, I had mainly been shooting in the UK, so being back home again — filming near my family house, surrounded by Lebanese crews and friends — meant a lot to me.

And yes, it absolutely changed the way I think as a director. Being on the other side of the camera gave me a much deeper understanding of actors — their vulnerability, their insecurities, and the amount of trust they place in a director. Experiencing that myself made me far more sensitive to what actors emotionally go through, and I genuinely think it made me a better director because of it.

— You once described yourself as quite an easygoing director. Has that changed over time, and how would you describe yourself on set today?

— I don’t know if “easygoing” is exactly the right word. I think what I really meant is that I genuinely love collaboration and deeply love the people I work with. A film set, for me, is this strange combination of summer camp and the military. There is a huge amount of discipline, hard work and intensity, but the only way the experience feels meaningful to me is if there is also a lot of love on set — love for each other and love for the story everyone is trying to tell together.

Over time, I realised that the energy of a set is shaped not only by the director, but by every single person there. So my contribution is often emotional as much as creative. I am actually quite a romantic director in that sense. I like the experience of making a film to feel special and emotionally connected. I love bringing collaborators from previous projects into new ones because I love seeing those relationships grow over time. Loyalty and friendship become part of the creative process for me.

And yes, I am very nurturing with actors. I like them to feel safe enough to play, experiment, even break the rules sometimes. Occasionally, something unexpected suddenly appears in a scene, and I love that feeling of everyone noticing it together and deciding to follow it. I think my role is to help actors reach difficult emotional places while also holding them through the process.

— When you are working on emotionally intense stories, do you stay emotionally affected by them yourself, or do you try to remain more controlled as a director?

— Of course there are moments when I become emotional. Sometimes you are behind the monitor and an actor suddenly delivers something so truthful that you completely forget where you are for a second. I have laughed behind the monitor many times, cried many times, felt anger, sadness — all of that absolutely happens.

But at the same time, I think I am able to feel those emotions without losing control because I am still inside the structure of filmmaking. You are emotional, but inside this imagined world you are building together.

And honestly, I love that part of directing. I recently worked on a comedy with A24, and I spent so much time behind the monitor laughing. That emotional response is actually very helpful because it reminds you that the scene is alive and working.

So yes, I allow myself to feel things on set. I think being emotionally present is important. The key is simply remaining emotionally present while still keeping enough control to guide the story forward.

— Out of all the films you have worked on, which one was the hardest for you to make?

— Costa Brava was definitely the hardest film for me to make. We were shooting after the August 4 explosion, during the economic collapse, in the middle of the pandemic and before vaccines even existed. So the entire experience felt very heavy emotionally. It wasn't just normal filmmaking stress — everyone around us was carrying anxiety, exhaustion, and in many ways, collective trauma.

What made it especially difficult was that most of the obstacles had nothing to do with creativity itself. Usually, on a film set, your problems are artistic or technical. Here, it was things like COVID tests, money being frozen in banks, production constantly adapting to the instability around us. And psychologically, I don't think any of us were fully present. We were all dealing with PTSD in one form or another.

Sometimes I still wonder whether I would have made a film closer to my original vision if my mind hadn't been so occupied by everything happening around us. But at the same time, maybe that emotional state also shaped the film in ways that were necessary. I honestly don't know, and I probably never will. But it definitely changed my relationship with filmmaking for a while. It took me time before wanting to make another film in Lebanon again.

— For people outside the film industry, directing often looks quite mysterious. What does your job actually involve from the moment an idea appears until the final film exists on screen?

— I think people often imagine directing as simply arriving on set and telling actors what to do, but in reality it is such a long and layered process. If it is my own project, everything begins with the writing. First there is an idea, then a synopsis, then a treatment, then eventually a script. And between all of that, there is an enormous amount of rewriting, research, questioning yourself, changing things completely and then starting again.

Once the script reaches a certain stage, the producers begin trying to finance it. Then my role shifts into something much more visual. I start asking myself: what does this world feel like emotionally? What colours belong to it? How should the camera observe these people? What kind of faces exist in this universe? Every creative decision slowly begins building the language of the film.

At the same time, you are casting actors, working with the cinematographer, the production designer, the costume team. Suddenly, this thing that only existed in your head starts becoming real around you. Then, when you arrive on set, directing becomes almost like conducting an orchestra. There are hundreds of people involved, all contributing to the same vision in different ways — from the actors to the sound team to the people feeding the crew every day.

And then, after all of that intensity, you return to something much quieter in post-production. Editing is fascinating to me because it feels like writing the film for a third time. A scene can completely change emotionally depending on how you cut it, where you place it, how long you stay on a face. Then comes sound design, colour correction, music, and eventually the entire world of festivals, premieres, and marketing.

What I actually love about filmmaking is that it constantly changes rhythm. There are moments where you are completely alone writing, then moments where you are surrounded by hundreds of people on set, and then suddenly you are back in a small editing room again. Every phase asks for a different version of you.

Television works quite differently for me. Usually, by the time I join a TV project, the financing already exists and the script is already written. So I arrive later in the process. If I emotionally connect to the material, then my role becomes finding the visual language for it and understanding how I can bring something personal into that world.

— You have worked across both film and television. Do they give you different things creatively, or does cinema still feel closest to you personally?

— Film is my first love, but TV is definitely my second love. What I really love about working in television is that it has allowed me to collaborate with writers I genuinely admire, as well as actors you get to spend a long time working with. Instead of sitting in long periods of waiting between films, I am constantly shooting, developing my craft and learning more about the kind of filmmaker I want to become.

What mattered to me was always finding TV projects that still felt creatively fulfilling. I wasn't interested in jobs where I would simply arrive as a technician, do the work, and leave again. The projects I connected with most were the ones that felt author-driven — where the people involved genuinely loved cinema and storytelling, and where I still felt I had creative freedom inside that world.

In that sense, television gave me something commercials never really could. Commercials are often ultimately about selling a product, whereas TV, at least in the projects I was lucky enough to work on, still allowed space for emotion, creativity and character.

Of course, filmmaking is also work and you need projects that help you live financially. But after sacrificing a lot to become a filmmaker, I realised I also need to feel creatively stimulated by what I am doing. I never wanted to reach a point where I no longer wanted to go to work.

— Is there a story or subject you feel especially drawn to exploring at this stage in your life?

— I think right now I am very drawn to talking about the experience of being a woman in your thirties while the world around you feels slightly like it is falling apart. I keep wanting to explore the female experience in a way that feels raw, emotionally honest, and not too careful around uncomfortable truths or difficult emotions.

And honestly, the film I most want to write is the one I am trying to write at the moment. But personal writing is hard. It asks for a huge amount of courage and vulnerability, and to reach that emotional state creatively, I need a certain level of solitude. Over the past few months, I haven't really had much of that. So right now, I think I am looking forward to the solitude almost as much as the writing itself.