Dir: Danielle Arbid | Hiam Abbass, Amine Benrachid | Fantasy Drama. 2026
Lebanese filmmaker Danielle Arbid opens this year’s 76th edition of the Berlinale with a film close to her own heart. Indeed Arbid is somewhat of a rebel with her style of filmmaking. And although Only Rebels Win will bring to mind that Fassbinder classic Fear Eats the Soul we have to accept that the Middle East is not as progressive as Germany was back in the mid 1970s. Arbid opens her film with a bold dash of comedy showing us that the Lebanon is just as racist as anywhere. The Lebanese look down on the Palestinians, and in turn the Gulf States consider themselves a cut above the lot. But this punchy vein of comedy soon fizzles out in the fires of dark melodrama that consume the second half of the film until whimsical mystery shrouds the inconclusive ending.
So this Spring/Autumn love story kicks off in Beirut with a light-hearted spring in its step. Hiam Abbass is Susan, a rather sardonic widow in the throes of mourning her much loved husband but surrounded by the usual bitchy girlfriends, very much in the misery loves company style, until Susan comes to the aid of a black guy with no papers, injured in a street scuffle. Taking him home and bandaging him up, the two grow close and that sets the tone for romance, Osman flattering Susan’s ego and lighting the fires of a tender courtship. But we never really get to know Osmane, who seems to be on his best behaviour until he’s not.
Susan lives in a close-knit community and soon the girls are gossiping and neighbours tags are wagging about her new friend. And the Lebanese are a voluble lot not known for their discretion, according to Arbid’s witty script that doesn’t really give Osman much of a personality other than painting him as a ‘strong, silent’ type. So he remains a dark horse until the very end, but his male ego certainly doesn’t appreciate the negative vibes that Susan’s son and ‘trans’ daughter send out, in no uncertain terms. Yes, Arbid weaves in some playful gay friendly elements in this entertaining social satire, and although Lebanon is generally considered more liberal that its regional neighbours this is still a grey area, and prosecution can still happen, according to bumph on the internet.
Abbass plays Susan as a bit of a dark horse, but in a different way from Osman: confident, secure and emotionally intelligent she carries the film and holds all the characters together; knowing when to draw the line when things come unstuck, as they were always going to in the end, which is left to our own imagination. Only Rebels Win certainly captures the zeigeist: it’s a warm and agreeable way to start this year’s festival.
ONLY REBELS WIN | 76TH BERLINALE | PANORAMA | OPENING FILM