‘Bye Bye Tiberias’: How Documentarian Lina Soualem & Her Actor Mother Hiam Abbass Explored Their Female Lineage
09.12.2023 - 19:11
/ deadline.com
Following her film, Their Algeria, documentarian Lina Soualem returns to her family once again for an in-depth look at its rich history. With Bye Bye Tiberias, Soualem focuses on several generations of women in her family, beginning with her mother, Succession star Hiam Abbass, who, as a young woman, left her home country of Palestine for France, where she still lives today. While Their Algeria followed the story of Soualem’s grandparents who decided to divorce after 62 years, Bye Bye Tiberias looks at what it means to leave your family and culture behind and the generational thread between women.
DEADLINE: Hiam, how did you feel when Lina first floated the idea of you being the subject of her film?
HIAM ABBASS: No way! But in the beginning, of course, Lina wasn’t very clear about what she wanted herself. She knew she wanted to do a movie, she knew she wanted to speak about the women in my family, the four generations, the transmissions between them, the way they each had survived, the difficulties she had to live in order to fulfill her life as a woman and as a mother, as a transmitter somehow.
But this wasn’t enough to convince me into going into my personal life in a way and just opening up really to the camera.It was the fact that I trusted her cinematographic vision and her engagement, her political engagement, her social engagement, the way she really wanted to tell this story, that brought me to “yes”, to finally see the camera as Lina’s eyes, and like I was talking to Lina somehow. I was talking to someone who is from my body and who’s from my blood. Once I opened up, I felt like I’m part of this narration, part of this importance in telling this story.
DEADLINE: Was there undiscovered pain in you, connected