Synopsis
Leaving her native village to follow her dream of becoming an actress, Hiam Abbass also left behind her mother, grandmother and seven sisters. Thirty years later, her filmmaker daughter Lina returns with her to journey through the vanished places among the scattered memories of four generations of daring Palestinian women.
A word from Tënk
Lina Soualem’s intimate second feature, Bye Bye Tiberias, skilfully blends archival documents, poetry and personal narration to reconstruct the story of her Palestinian family. Taking an inspired look at four generations of women, the filmmaker revisits the story of her mother, actress Hiam Abbass, who left her native village of Deir Hanna, near Lake Tiberias, at an early age to pursue her dreams. With delicacy, the work bears witness to the importance of lineage and intergenerational relationships in a context of exile and uprooting. The result is a luminous portrait of resilient women, where family mourning and personal memories offer a gateway to the collective memory of an entire people.
Marlene Edoyan
Member of the RIDM Programming Collective
