Bye bye Tiberias

Hiam Abbass left her village in Palestine for Europe to make her dream of becoming an actress come true, and so doing, leaving behind her mother, her grandmother and her seven sisters. Thirty years later, her daughter Lina, a filmmaker, goes back with her to trace these lost places and the fragmented memories of four generations of Palestinian women. A true weaving of images from the present and from historical and family archives, the film becomes an exploration of the transmission of memory, of places, of femininity, of resistance, in the lives of women who have learnt how to leave everything behind and start all over again.
“ My mother (Hiam Abbass) was aware of the fact that I was filming her, and something of our intimacy, with the aim of telling a more universal story, to give voice to an ‘us’. My mother’s life is made up of journeys, struggles and personal battles. She freed herself from many things over time, but she also made herself a protective shell. That shell helped her to move on.” Lina Soualem