Bye Bye Tiberias
Lina Soualem, the daughter of the Palestinian actress Hiam Abbass, joins her mother to document their family history over four generations.
Image courtesy of TAPE Collective
This is the second documentary feature to be made by Lina Soualem who is the daughter of that fine actress Hiam Abbass. Its predecessor, Their Algeria (2020), found her looking at the lives of two of her ancestors and it is now other family members who are the central focus of Bye Bye Tiberias. This time she places her mother screen centre but this award-winning film is in no sense a study of her acting career. On the contrary, although we hear about the earlier stages of her life, Hiam Abbass is first and foremost being invited by her daughter, now aged 34, to reflect on the life of her own mother, Nemat, and on that of her grandmother Um Ali. Since Lina Soualem herself is also present in this film, Bye Bye Tiberias is, in effect, a study of four generations of this one Palestinian family and in each case the chief focus is on a woman. Indeed, it can be said that the film spotlights five female members of the family since a further significant figure here is Hosnieh the older sister of Um Ali.
The film’s starting point is Lake Tiberias, best known to the world for the references to it in the Bible in which it is known as the Sea of Galilee. Not far away is the village of Deir Hanna and it was there that Um Ali and her husband Hosni eventually came to settle after being forced to leave wartime Tiberias in 1948 at which point they had taken refuge in Lebanon. That same dispersal had resulted in Hosnieh becoming separated from Um Ali with the consequence that she lived most of her life as a refugee in a camp in Syria. But for Lina Soualem it was visits to Deir Hanna and swimming in the lake that became part of her childhood memories. That village had been home to her mother when growing up but, anxious to become an actress, Hiam Abbass had left Deir Hanna in 1982 and for a long time now has been based in Paris. For this film her daughter brought her back both to revisit and to reflect. Her manner suggests awareness of how this could be opening a gate to past sorrows (the phrase is hers) but under the surface her response is emotive and one senses that being involved in a film dedicated to the memory of Nemat, Um Ali and Hosnieh is ultimately a positive experience for her. It could even be the case that her participation met a need for her to mourn further the death of her mother since she had not been present when it happened.
In so far as Bye Bye Tiberias incorporates old photographs, archive footage and extracts from home videos interwoven with new material it may sound like a film that fits a standard documentary formula. That is not really the case, however, because the dominant impression that we get is of the extraordinarily intimate nature of this project. Because the subsequent history of the family was so significantly shaped by the events of 1948, it is a work that carries a deep sense of sadness and, seeing it today with the war in Gaza raging, gives Bye Bye Tiberias extra power simply because it makes us identify with an ordinary Palestinian family. Yet it does not play as a film in which the political elements are the key point. Rather this is a family portrait that emerges vividly both when evoking the past (the old black-and-white footage used is of admirable quality) and when making us see for ourselves the bonds that unite this family. The film that comes closest in character to this one is probably 2022’s The Super-8 Years for there too - and with an even stronger emphasis on home movies - we were invited to look back on a family history in a work made by family members, in that case the writer Annie Ernaux and her son David Ernaux-Briot.
In some respects, The Super-8 Years, which also worked as a social document of changing times, was the more impressive film. It was certainly more straightforward to follow for Soualem’s film is constantly jumping around in time and labelled accordingly and the fact that there are so many members in this family sometimes leads to confusion. Further distractions arise as we adjust on occasion to Hiam Abbass reading words actually written by her daughter and also to a couple of scenes in which incidents are acted out and presented as such. Packed into 83 minutes, it can sometimes seem a challenge to take it all in fully and it is slightly unexpected when Hosnieh, briefly mentioned earlier, becomes a key figure late on (this does, however, include some of the film’s most memorable footage).
But, if one has some reservations about Soualem's film, further comparison with The Super-8 Years does bring out what makes it so very special. In her film Annie Ernaux was looking back on her life and marriage in a very critical way. Here, in total contrast to that, we find that the greatest achievement of Bye Bye Tiberias lies in its ability to make us recognise so clearly the exceptionally close and loving bonds within this family. That’s something which extends to Lina Soualem wanting to make this film, a work which ensures that the women featured in it and the world in which they lived are preserved on screen. Regardless of the sadness in their lives, this film is a personal celebration of these people in a form which now exists for us all to share.
Original title: Bye Bye Tibériade.
MANSEL STIMPSON
Featuring Hiam Abbass, Lina Soualem, Amer Khalil, Um Ali Tabari, Nemat Tabari Abbas, Said Abbas, Omaya Abbas, Johayna Hussein Abbas, Buthayna Abbas Hajo, Diana Hussein, Wafa Mango, Zahera Bounechada, Hanan Abbas Diab, Naief Abbas, Jallal Abbas.
Dir Lina Soualem, Pro Jean-Marie Nizan, Screenplay Lina Soualem and Nadine Naous with Gladys Joujou, Ph Frida Marzouk, Thomas Brémond and Lina Soualem, Ed Gladys Joujou, Music Amin Bouhafa.
BeallProds/Altitude 100 Prods/Philistine Films/Arte France-La Lucarne-Tape Collective.
83 mins. France/Belgium/Palestine/Qatar/Lebanon/Denmark/Egypt. 2023. UK Rel: 28 June 2024. Cert. PG.
