Bye Bye Tiberias

Filmmaker Lina Soualem’s sentimental journey with her actress mother Hiam Abbass becomes a powerful celebration of lives marked by separation, exile and erasure.

There is a persistent tension in the film between the history of those who were forcibly displaced, and Hiam, who made the autonomous choice to leave.

Bye Bye Tiberias is a unique documentary that handles its painful subject with grace and care.

The documentary may be understated, with its long dialogue-free stretches. But the distractions that pull Abbass’s stare away from her daughter’s lens give Bye Bye Tiberias a pointedly political backbone that the documentary buoys with clever editing and a tangible self-assuredness.

Bye Bye Tiberias is a powerful portrait of how broken things come back together over and over.

If there is any one takeaway from the film, it’s the importance of family attachments and the succor they provide.