A documentary retracing the life of Franco-Palestinian actress Hiam Abbass was screened on Saturday at the Marrakech International Film Festival, where it is in competition, finding particular resonance against the backdrop of the war in the Gaza Strip.
Under thunderous applause, Moroccan spectators shouted “long live Palestine” after the screening of Bye bye Tiberias directed by Hiam Abbass’s daughter, the Franco-Algerian Lina Soualem. The documentary “opens up the pains of the past” to reflect the difficult life choices of Hiam Abbass and the women of his family, taking as its starting point the Nakba, the “catastrophe” that the creation of Israel constituted for the Palestinians. in 1948, their exile and displacement. “The stories told by these women in this film are not only stories of transmission from woman to woman, from daughter to mother or from mother to daughter,” proclaimed Lina Soualem. They “convey a story of people deprived of their identity”.
Also read “Shards of the World” No. 31: Gaza, a short story of a strip of land transformed into a powder barrel
Hiam Abbass’ family was forcibly moved in 1948 from Tiberias to Deir Hanna, about thirty kilometers to the northwest, which the film recounts through numerous personal archives. Hiam Abbass, born in 1960 in northern Israel, left her native land in the 1980s for London then Paris, driven by her desire to make cinema.
She notably played in The Syrian Bride (Eran Riklis, 2004) Munich (Steven Spielberg, 2005), Paradise now (Hany Abou Assad, 2005) and the American series Succession. “With our stories, we fight against erasure and these images present themselves as proof of a denied existence,” added Lina Soualem, saying she was thinking “of the inhabitants of Gaza who are in reality children and grandchildren of refugees Palestinians, who like you and me, are trying to find their place in the world.
The film, which is due to be released in the spring in France and is in the running for the 2024 Oscar for best international film, was screened as a war broke out in the Gaza Strip, in retaliation for the bloody attack by commandos of the Palestinian Hamas on October 7 on Israeli soil. “I told myself that we should not be too emotional but it is difficult for us, the Palestinians, not to be,” Hiam Abbass told the audience at the Marrakech festival, which takes place from November 24 to December 2. This 20th edition is marked by the cancellation of the traditional screenings on the Jamaa El Fna square, due to the desire to organize an event “sober without festivities” because of the war in Gaza, according to the organizers. Expected this week, American filmmaker Martin Scorsese canceled his trip “for personal reasons,” according to this source.