Bye Bye Tiberias

Hiam Abbass left her native Palestinian village of Deir Hanna in Galilee to follow her dream of becoming an actress in Europe, leaving behind her mother, grandmother and seven sisters. But she returned to her village every summer, together with Lina, the daughter she gave birth to in Paris, and all their trips were tenderly filmed.

Lina is now in her thirties. Camera in hand, she reassesses the bold choices her mother made, and also explores the personal journey of several other female family members, whose stories connect with different periods in history. This inevitably leads to the fateful year of 1948, which is inextricably bound up with the lives of the women.

By reconstructing the past through personal videos and black-and-white archive footage, Lina Soualem pieces together a story of determination and resistance that spans different generations and territories. Although she is the first of these women who was not born in Palestine, she feels part of this powerful female lineage.