Bye Bye Tiberias
Lina Soualem / France, Palestine, Belgium & Qatar / 2023 / 82 min
Four generations of Palestinian women give vivid and moving accounts of their relationship with their homeland, their hometown of Tiberias, and the resistance that has been passed down from mother to daughter.
When Hiam Abbass was 23, she left her family and her Palestinian village to become an actress in France. She has lived there for over 30 years, but every summer she returns to her childhood village with her daughter. The daughter has become a film director and every summer she brings her camera and films her grandmother’s house, her mother’s seven sisters in conversation and other moments from her stay in Palestine. The family used to live in Tiberias by Lake Genesaret, where Jesus walked on water, but in 1948 they were forced to leave. Four generations later, the memory of their hometown lives on in the family members. Through poems, letters, crisp archival footage and contemporary re-enactments of old situations, filmmaker Lina Soualem brings her family’s past to life in a personal narrative about four generations of women, each representing a lived chapter in their country’s history.