Lina Soualem’s second documentary, Bye Bye Tiberias, narrates the lives of four generations of women in her family, poetically weaving personal testimonies with historical facts. It follows Soualem as she returns with her mother, screen legend Hiam Abbass, to the Palestinian village of Deir Hanna, which Abbass left 30 years ago to pursue her career as an actress. She examines family photographs and engages in conversation with her grandmother, Nemat, who shares intimate stories from their past.

In this deeply poignant, inter-generational portrait, memories are narrated or re-enacted, conveying the weight of exile, the violence of occupied Palestine and profound joy. Family footage acts as a tool of remembrance and defiance in the face of erasure. Soualem reclaims historical archival footage and retraces personal experiences, such as that of her great-grandmother, Um Ali, who was forced to leave Tiberias with her family during the Nakba in 1948.

Award-winning and internationally acclaimed, Bye Bye Tiberias has received the BFI London Film Festival 2023 Grierson Award, among other accolades. As it enjoys its UK-wide release, we spoke with the French-Palestinian-Algerian filmmaker about archives, acts of resistance and transmission.

Nataal: What were the motivations behind Bye Bye Tiberias and how was it informed by your first documentary Their Algeria?

Lina Soualem: Their Algeria was a story of transmission in silence, with silences that did not translate secrets, but the pain of uprooting. So, there was the whole discovery of how to reactivate transmission where the people we are filming never spoke about it. I used few archives and it was a regret because I had a lot of them, but also because the real characters who are my grandparents took precedence. They finally said a lot of things, even if only through their silences and their gestures.

In Bye Bye Tiberias, I really wanted to include more archives. It's not a story of silence, but a story of fragmentation. It is a family history that has been transmitted, but in fragments. It was important for me to rebuild it in a linear way to create an imaginary territory. All the women I film are the women of my family. In my film they are able to live together, when in reality, they have been separated and displaced. I wanted to put them back in the places they knew, to which they belonged, from which they were expelled and also to make them exist together.

Archives were very important in the context of a Palestinian story that is not recognised, each image becomes proof of an existence that is denied, and also of a daily life that is not represented at all. When we talk about Palestinians we are only interested in moments of crisis, of war, even if for me there is always war because that’s the status quo – the Nakba that began, continues. But in fact, outside of these moments, there is a daily life that is also a form of resistance since we are in a context where it is a story that is actively denied and erased. Therefore, to continue to live, keep our history alive, celebrate through birthdays, weddings, and transmission to future generations are all ways of resisting continuous erasure.

I am lucky to have inherited a lot of family archives. Even though it is a very personal and individual story, they are not only stories of transmission of the women in my family, from mother to daughter, they are also stories that echo a collective history of Palestinian women. Palestinians who are deprived of their identity, of their rights, and who cannot fully exist in all their complexity.

I wrote a lot more in Bye Bye Tiberias, I had a lot of stories and I had to rewrite them chronologically starting from the source – my great-grandmother Um Ali, then the story of my grandmother, my mother and finally me. My voice came through in the movie once I was able to give room to the other women. It came organically in the making of the movie which took almost six years.

I worked with the same editor for Their Algeria and Bye Bye Tiberias, Gladys Joujou, who contributed to the writing. For Bye Bye Tiberias, I also worked with a co-author, Nadine Naous. For this film, I needed to be surrounded, to have an artistic team because I could not collect all these stories alone. I needed to have distance to be able to connect the past and the present.

Nataal: You mentioned the silences of your grandparents in Their Algeria. There is also the silence of your mother, Hiam Abbass, in Bye Bye Tiberias, which is full of meaning. How did you position yourself as a director filming your mother in these moments of dense introspection?

Soualem: I inherited cinema through my family, I never really saw these two worlds as distinct. Palestine was my family, but it was also my mother in the movies. It was always very close. In fact, when I started filming my mom, I realised that for her, it was two very distinct worlds, so it was difficult for her to share her intimate story and the story of her family in front of a camera. She is also very aware of the camera as an actress. For me, it's also difficult to talk to my mother and get out of my position as a daughter. So, we had to find a balance so that we could share together from woman to woman. I didn't want her to suffer, so I wrote her story which I read myself based on things she told me. I have her replay scenes from her childhood, from her youth, also so that she can be in a setting in which she is comfortable acting. She finally told me that she had always dreamed of telling the story of her mother and grandmother, but that she could not do it because of the lack of distance. Sometimes, it takes a generation after that to be able to give everyone back the right to memory and one that can exist in the public space.

Nataal: How did your background in history influence this documentary and the choice of linear storytelling?

Soualem: I think that in history we try to compare different histories of the same event, several sources, and I proceed in the same way when I make movies. I mix collected oral stories and historical archives to give context and to make several realities exist, and provide complexity to people who are often either marginalised, essentialised, or told under a prism that is often Western.

The question of the use of archives is also quite complex since they are archives filmed by states that previously had mandates or colonies, states that dominated a territory. They did not film to make people visible but to document the ways in which they controlled a certain territory. We need to think about ethics, can we reuse these archives and layer our voice over it? In the act of documentary or fiction creation, we have the right to subjectivity. I tell the subjectivity of the life story of several people through their emotions and their sensations. Taking an interest in all the intimate stories and adding them together enriches the collective memory.

Nataal: How was the distribution process for Bye Bye Tiberias? Did you encounter any challenges?

Soualem: During the distribution of Bye Bye Tiberias, I was very privileged and supported. The focus on women's stories drew some people's interest in the documentary. And my mother, Hiam Abbass is well known and respected internationally. I wanted to distribute Bye Bye Tiberias, only working with people I had worked with, who I trust, are independent and work with independent circuits. They are really attentive to the political context, to sensitivity, considering that the film is very personal, protecting the characters, and also the director. I was very lucky with this film to find partners who have the same vision such as T A P E Collective, JHR Films and MC Distribution. In the United States the film is distributed by Women Make Movies, which only releases women's films. They accompanied us when the film was nominated to represent Palestine at the Oscars. It was quite extraordinary because Palestine has been choosing a film every year for 13 years that will represent Palestine and this is the first time they have chosen a documentary film, which is about women and is intimate.

Nataal: Do you already have research perspectives for your next project?

Soualem: I want to continue working on my archives because I always have this frustration where reality takes precedence over my archives. I want to immerse myself in an archival film that weaves family and historical archives. Archives are so valuable when history is hidden and there is so much to learn from them. Besides that, I want to write fiction but it’s still unclear.