Bye Bye Tiberias

Production year: 2023
Country: Palestine
Director: Lina Soualem
Producer: Jean-Marie Nizan

Thirty years ago, Hiam left the Palestinian village of Deir Hanna in Galilee, where she grew up with her great-grandmother Um Ali, her mother Neemat, her father Said, her seven sisters and two brothers, to pursue her dream of becoming an actress in France. With camera in hand, her daughter Lina examines her mother’s chosen exile and the way in which the women in the family she left behind influenced her imagination and her bold choices.

Lina explores the journey of her mother Hiam, starting from what she is today – an internationally renowned actress – and working back to the source of the transmission. Weaving together footage shot today, family archives, historical footage and extracts from fiction, the film becomes an exploration of the transmission of memory, places, know-how, femininity and resistance in the lives of Palestinian women for whom dispossession is the norm and resilience an everyday soundtrack.