From November 15 to 26, 138 films from 47 countries will be screened as part of the Montreal International Documentary Meetings (RIDM); a unique meeting, which offers an intimate look at the state of the world and the state of the art. Spotlight on the opening film, Bye Bye Tiberias.
At the age of 23, Hiam Abbass, known in particular for her role as Marcia Roy in the cult series Succession (HBO), made the decision to leave her grandmother, her mother, her seven sisters and her village of Deir Hanna, in Palestine, to pursue her dream of becoming an actress in France. A few years later, when his daughter Lina was born, Hiam Abbass reconnected with his family, returning to his childhood home every summer.
Together, under the gaze of the camera held by Lina’s father, mother and daughter walk in the footsteps of their ancestors and bathe in Lake Tiberias, or Sea of Galilee, from where Hiam Abbass’ grandparents expelled in 1948 under the pretext that they were Palestinians.
Using these archive images captured by her father, Lina Soualem, now a director, reconstructs the story of her Palestinian family through four generations of women in Bye Bye Tiberias, the documentary that opens the Montreal International Documentary Meetings on November 15. Navigating between poetry, personal narration and archival documents, the film testifies to the importance of memory through exile and uprooting.
More than a month after the outbreak of the war between Israel and Hamas, which to date has resulted in a disproportionate toll of Palestinian victims in Gaza, the message conveyed by Lina Soualem’s documentary seems to the outside world more relevant than ever. .
However, the filmmaker says she has long been possessed by a feeling of urgency. “When I was writing the film brief, about five years ago, I was already haunted by the importance of showing Palestinian women whose stories are completely invisible. Through them, I wanted to tell the story of a people dispossessed of their rights, forced to constantly reinvent themselves, who face displacement, occupation, dispossession and massacre. I wanted the women in my family to be able to exist in all their complexity and humanity, two aspects always questioned, because they are women, and because they are Palestinian. Despite everything, they managed to take control of their destiny and pass on to their children the values of love, generosity, respect, tolerance and forgiveness, even though these things were not granted to them individually and collectively. »
The intimate and the collective
As in his previous documentary, Their Algeria (2020), in which she was interested in the story of her paternal grandparents, the Franco-Palestinian-Algerian director is interested in the ramifications that exist between the intimate and the collective, more precisely between individual and collective.
By mixing images of the past with those of the present in the film, Lina Soualem does not just reactivate a memory; she inscribes it in vanished places and traces the chains and wounds that cross generations, giving substance to a denied history.
“As official history reduces certain memories to silence, it is up to individuals to forge their own memory to exist in the public space and to face difficulties and dehumanization enterprises. It’s a question of survival. »
More than a call for freedom, Bye Bye Tiberias is an ode to complexity. “The women I tell stories about are not free, but they are strong, combative, resilient and full of love. I want to show that there is something other than the binary stigmas that define a Palestinian woman, a Palestinian, an Arab, and give all these people the possibility of existing. »