‘Bye Bye Tiberias’ Review: Hiam Abbass’ Daughter Honors Women Who Learned to Leave Everything and Start Anew
variety.comAlissa Simon Film Critic After “Their Algeria,” a well-received documentary from 2020 about the parents of her actor father Zinedine Soualem, France-born filmmaker-performer Lina Soualem turns her camera on her maternal relatives in “Bye Bye Tiberias,” in particular her mother, the Palestine-born actress Hiam Abbass.
By telling their story, she hopes to reclaim and question the personal, historical and visual legacies she inherited and to answer the question “How does a woman find her place when caught between worlds?” a question that applies equally to her and her mother.
After its world premiere at the Venice Film Fest, the essay film, with its mix of the personal and the political, has been a festival favorite, going on to win the Grierson award for best documentary in London and the jury prize ex aequo in Marrakech.
It represents Palestine in the Oscar international feature competition. The title gives a clue to what Soualem considers the critical turning point in the family’s fortunes: their 1948 expulsion from their home and farm in Tiberias during the war that followed the partition of Palestine and the declaration of the independent State of Israel.
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