Four Generations of Palestinian Women Live, Love and Persevere in Lina Soualem’s Venice Premiere ‘Bye Bye Tiberias’
03.09.2023 - 14:59
/ variety.com
Christopher Vourlias To find her voice as a filmmaker, Paris-based documentarian Lina Soualem had to first look to the past. The daughter of French actor Zinedine Soualem and Palestinian actress Hiam Abbass — seen recently as the Machiavellian Marcia Roy in HBO’s “Succession” — Soualem used her directorial debut, “Their Algeria,” to tell the story of her paternal grandparents’ decision to separate after more than 60 years of marriage. Now she returns with another intimate family portrait, “Bye Bye Tiberias,” which premieres Sept.
3 at the Venice Film Festival. Lightdox is handling world sales. Soualem’s sophomore effort is an emotional journey that sees the filmmaker and her mother return to the family’s ancestral village in Palestine, which Abbass left in her early twenties to pursue her dream of becoming an actress in Europe.
In the process, she left behind her mother, grandmother and seven sisters, along with questions that haunt the actress to this day. Following on the heels of her well-regarded debut, which premiered at Visions du Réel and scooped more than a dozen awards on the festival circuit, “Bye Bye Tiberias” cements Soualem’s status as a documentary filmmaker to watch, even as it marks the culmination of a long, winding journey. “It took me some time to understand why I wanted to do these kinds of films,” she says.
Ultimately, however, “I felt like it was the path that I had wanted to take since the beginning.” Soualem and Abbass spoke to Variety ahead of the Venice premiere of “Bye Bye Tiberias,” which plays next at the Toronto Film Festival. The director admits she was initially skeptical about returning to the family album for her second feature. “Having done the first, I wasn’t sure that I would have
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