Lina Soualem (Paris, 1990) sets the limits before the interview begins. “I want to talk only about the movie. No politics, because I have a large part of my family there and I don’t want to expose them.” There is Deir Hanna, an Israeli town with a Palestinian majority, located on the border with Lebanon, where his great-grandparents arrived in 1948, after being expelled from their home in Tiberias. His documentary takes place in this place Bye Bye Tiberiasin which she tells the story of the women in the family, starting with her mother, the renowned actress Hiam Abbass, who has worked on the series Succession and acts in films like Gaza mon amourParadise now, Blade Runner 2049 or The lemon trees.
In the feature film, in competition at the Tarifa African Film Festival, where it was screened on Wednesday, there is an urgency to rescue memories, put wounds on the table and unite different chapters of family history before its protagonists disappear. “When I film my grandmother I am filming many women with similar stories that have not been told. I wanted to capture that memory and transmit it,” explains Soualem, whose first film, Leur Algerierevolved around the family of her father, actor Zinedine Soualem.
The war in Gaza, which broke out in October, a month after the premiere of Soualem’s documentary, has become an unexpected backdrop in the international journey of Bye Bye Tiberiaswho represented Palestine at the last edition of the Oscars.
Ask. Do you think your film gains greater resonance due to the current context?
Answer. I understand that at this moment there are people who give it particular attention and that it awakens an interest that perhaps at another time they would not have had. But what is happening is not new to us. I started writing the script for this feature film in 2017 and in it I already talked about the strong dehumanization and stigmatization that Palestinians suffer and the fact that their history is not recognized. We are only interested in the Palestinians in the moments of tragedy, which are real and part of their history, and we do not look at their daily lives or their daily resistance, which consists of surviving and living.
Q. At what moment did you decide to tell the story of your mother and other women in the family?
R. I think I always wanted to make this movie, but I had to direct first Leur Algerie, about my Algerian family and their exile. Without her, I would not have been able to face Bye Bye Tiberias because it was harder for me to talk about Palestine than Algeria. The story of my Palestinian family is a fragmented story full of pain, which is framed in a collective tragedy that is still ongoing. In my first film I learned a lot, especially how to deal with the transmission of exile through cinema, because it is something invisible and often unspeakable that can be told thanks to the reflection that the images provide us.
Q. His first two films are about his family. Is it a circle that has already closed?
R. Don’t know. I really wanted to bring these two family stories to the movies. I think about my Algerian and Palestinian grandparents and I feel that their intimate history is much more than that: it is a collective history, of people who have been made invisible and marginalized. When I film my grandmother I am filming many women with similar stories that have not been told. I wanted to capture that memory and pass it on.
I think about my Algerian and Palestinian grandparents and I feel that their intimate history is much more than that: it is a collective history, of people who have been made invisible and marginalized.
Q. At one point in the film you say: “Behind our smiles, I know that fear is latent within us. What if everything we have left of this place disappears? “I was born far from this lake, but I feel very close.”
R. I was born in Paris, but there have been things that have always been transmitted to me, for example, the fear of loss. That’s why we cling to memory, to the traces we have and perhaps it was necessary to jump several generations to be able to make this film.
Q. Her feature film stars women, in front of and behind the cameras.
R. I have grown up with them. In my mother’s family they are the guardians of the temple of family memory and I wanted to portray them in their complexity and authenticity because I believe that the Arab woman, especially in Western cinema, is either represented as a traditional and conservative person, or as a being free who abandons everything, often to go to Europe, as if that were the model of freedom. And the women from this place that I know are neither one nor the other, but a mixture of many things: they appreciate traditions and cultural values, but they are very modern and have managed to make many of their aspirations come true, sometimes creating a conflict with his family but without separating from it.
Q. Have doors closed on you, especially since last October, for having directed a film that talks about the expulsion of his mother’s family in 1948 and the nostalgia of the diaspora?
R. Surely there are things I don’t know, but I feel privileged because since September, when it was released, the film has been shown in many places, and it has not been censored or withdrawn from any festival. It has been screened in the United States, France, Germany… And I have had the opportunity to present it and lend my voice to defend it.
Q. We are at a film festival where there are several female directors and screenwriters from the Arab world who have been pioneers in a very masculine world.
R. They have paved the way for us and now, when we make films, we are not isolated and alone. There has been a lot of transmission of knowledge from more experienced filmmakers. When I made my first film there were female professionals from the Arab world who supported me a lot, such as Azza Chaabouni. I was 27 years old, I had not done anything before… Supports like yours allowed me to exist. Currently, we have created a collective of young filmmakers from the Arab world called Rawiyatwhich means storytellers. We give each other advice on productions, contracts, festivals… I like that solidarity in an environment as competitive as this.
When a woman tackles a project about something distant, a historical film, for example, she is immediately questioned, while a man receives congratulations. Women are quickly delegitimized
Q. One of these women who has paved the way, the Moroccan Farida Benlyazid, said at this festival that women filmmakers tell the stories of the soul. Do you agree?
R. I think women focus on very intimate stories, as if they had perfectly understood that the intimate is the most universal and reaches the most people. And many times they also opt for that subjectivity because when a woman tackles a project about something distant, a historical film, for example, she is immediately questioned, while a man receives congratulations. Women are quickly delegitimized.
Q. Have you felt delegitimized?
R. Yes. We always have to do more to convince. First of all, we have less funding. And that means that when we make the first film we don’t earn enough and it is very difficult for us to make the second one, because we have to do other work in between to obtain funds. The reality is that there are many women who direct their first film and never make the second, even if they have been successful.
Q. At the beginning of the film, her mother is reluctant to delve into the family’s history and asks her not to reopen “the suffering of the past.” Now what does she think of the result?
R. It was very hard for my mother to come forward, but in the end she told me that she had always wanted to tell the lives of her mother and grandmother and that she had even written poems about her grandmother, but she didn’t know how to approach this task. Now, seeing that her memories are there forever, she feels a kind of relief and pride, because the history that has marked her so much is palpable, she is there.
Q. What is your next project?
R. For now, I am dedicated to the presentation of Bye Bye Tiberias in different countries and festivals. For me it is important to be there, to explain things myself, with my voice, and not have them speak for me. It is also a way to fight against the stigmatization of Palestinians.
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