“Images of the past overlap those of the present “

These words are spoken by Lina Soualem, whose voice is heard primarily as the narrator of her film Bye Bye Tiberias (Arabic: باي باي طبريا), in which she travels from her home in France to a small village in Palestine, in an effort to unearth secrets about her family’s past, which is reflected mainly in the footage she shares from the past. Accompanying her on this voyage is her mother, acclaimed actress Hiam Abbass, who is covertly the central subject of the film and its emotional and narrative anchor that guides this fascinating and very moving documentary. Born in Nazareth and raised in a Palestinian village before eventually leaving for Europe, Abbass has had a fascinating life, and one that makes for an unexpectedly compelling story, which is likely what Soualem intended to convey when she set out to make this film. A very simple documentary with a straightforward premise, the film endeavours to use Abbass’ fascinating life story as the starting-point for a thrilling, captivating glimpse into the past, weaving a narrative that feels both intimate and sprawling, and while she is a novice filmmaker, Soualem proves to be a tremendously promising cinematic voice, with her unfurnished but deeply heartfelt approach to storytelling being a sign of a keen sense of self-awareness, and her ability to take a relatively raw subject and transform it into an engaging and compelling examination of not only her familial history, but a range of other subjects, proving to be the start of what will hopefully be a strong career. Small but complex, Bye Bye Tiberias touches on some universal themes and presents them with an earnest attention to detail and a willingness to experiment with form and content in increasingly fascinating ways.

Like many great filmmakers who start their career with documentaries, Soualem uses her own life as a starting point – and what many of us don’t realise is that we often have the tools to make relatively nuanced documentaries in the form of home videos. Despite usually being viewed as incredibly personal moments captured on film that are mostly there to be seen by those within a particular circle of people, these videos can be repurposed in such a way that they tell the story of our lives, and a few filmmakers have taken advantage of having this footage at their disposal, with Soualem being one. As she remarks, the simple act of recording moments of her childhood placed her within the long chronology of the women in her family, which is the overall focus of her story. Using these intimate moments that were captured on film, the director crafts an engaging narrative that she intercuts with new footage filmed specifically for this documentary, mainly taking the form of chronicling the journey she and her mother take back to the small Palestinian village in which she grew up. This process allows for a fascinating and captivating depiction of their lives, the oscillation between the past and present being vitally important to the overall message of the film, as alluded to in the quote that started this review. Candid moments are reworked to be vibrant glimpses into the past, and when coupled with the director’s own narration and Abbass’s fascinating recollections, they make for some of the most profoundly moving moments of the year, proving that the simplest of approaches have yielded some truly impressive results when given the time and space.

However, Bye Bye Tiberias is not the kind of film that wants the viewer to fixate on its form – as far as documentaries go, it is relatively conventional and perhaps slightly orthodox in how it utilises archival footage in relation to the overarching narrative. The themes are what keep us invested, and we find that this film is one that focuses specifically on memory. Crafting a film around Abbass’ recollections of her own formative years, which are interspliced with her daughter’s philosophical musings, Soualem crafts a film that looks at how we navigate the past through memory – for the protagonist in this film, life has not always been easy, but yet she speaks about her childhood and adolescence with such fondness, making it clear that despite taking up residency in Europe and finding success in every corner of the globe, she is still a Palestinian at heart, and that this is the culture that she carries with her during every waking moment of her life. The past can take the form of an unbearable weight, a burden that not only stays with us, but can sometimes guide our lives, taking us in directions that are directly oppositional to where we intend to go based on our ambitions – but its overcoming these challenges and realizing that we all have an ancestry that defines us as people is the key to turning this burden into an asset, which we see throughout Abbass’ attempts to plumb the depths of the past and offer her own unique perspective on not only her life, but her culture as a whole, which is vibrant and nuanced, and rendered in such beautiful detail by a director with a firm vision and the willingness to take some risks in making this film, which proves to be a lot more layered than it may have appeared at first.

The specific intention Soualem had for Bye Bye Tiberias is not entirely clear, and we often find that documentaries are usually the genre in which there is the most disconnect between original purpose and the final product, many filmmakers discovering that their film takes shape during the process of actually crafting it, rather than in the conceptual stage, which is one of the great merits of non-fiction filmmaking. However, there are a few key elements that we can see drove the director to step behind the camera – and it seems like the main intention was to tell the story of the women in her family. Using her mother as the anchor that lays the foundation for the story, the director casts a wide net into the past, examining the past through setting out to find out the names of the women that formed her family – some of them have names, others that are further back are referred to only by where they appear in her family chronology, but every one of them is treated with nothing but the utmost respect and admiration, especially those that have died and exist only in the home video footage, and sometimes only in the memories shared by Abbass, who does her best to pay tribute to the women that forged the way for her, and in the act of returning to the village where she grew up, she can reflect on the impact they made, which leads to a beautiful and poetic series of moments in which these generations of women, many of which have died, are brought back to life, albeit only for a moment through having their stories told. It’s a simple approach, and one that is certainly not groundbreaking, but considering how so many extraordinary women live in obscurity without ever having their stories told, to have them evoked with such pride and affection makes a profound impact and helps us understand this family and their dynamic, and how the culture has been passed down through the generations to the present day, where Soualem herself aims to continue to uphold this incredible legacy that she has been asked to preserve, and which is done beautifully throughout this film.

The subject of homecoming is one that occasionally appears in art – we live in an age where it has become easier than ever to find a home on the other side of the world, starting a new life surrounded by an entirely new culture, which can become part of us if we allow it, or if we stay long enough. However, our roots are often elsewhere, which is the impetus for this film, which shows the director voyaging back to the homeland of her mother, who narrates her own life story and provides compelling anecdotes and recollections from the past, either pulling from her own personal memories or relaying the stories that her mother told her, and which were passed down through the generations. The film has been marketed as something of a biographical account of Abbass’ life, and while her status as someone who has found acclaim in a majorly visible industry does factor into the story, this is actually supplementary to the overall message of the film, which is more about the journey she took in her younger years, particularly when she stood at the crossroads that gave her a choice of a life to pursue, something that was never once afforded to many of the women that came before her, and the process of returning home, while seemingly joyful, brings with it a lot of challenges, specifically in her efforts to reconcile the past with the present. It is all beautifully captured by Soualem, who looks at this story with such immense respect and admiration, making for a truly extraordinary piece of cinema that is complex, engaging and achingly beautiful.