Switzerland’s Lightdox has acquired world sales rights to Lina Soualem’s Bye Bye Tiberias ahead of the documentary’s world premiere in the special events sidebar of Venice parallel section Giornate degli Autori.
Soualem’s feature captures the stories passed on by four generations of daring Palestinian women in her family, one of whom is her mother Hiam Abbass, the celebrated actor whose credits include Succession, Inheritance, and Munich.
Soualem accompanies her mother and questions her choices as Abbass returns to the native Palestinian village 30 years after she left in her early twenties to follow her dream of becoming an actress in Europe, leaving behind her mother, grandmother, and seven sisters.
Bye Bye Tiberias will then travel to TIFF for its North American premiere.
“After successfully representing Lina Soualem’s feature debut Their Algeria, we’re overjoyed to continue our collaboration and keep supporting her talent with her second feature documentary,” said Bojana Marić, co-founder of sales agent and distributor Lightdox.
“Bye Bye Tiberias is an intimate and multifaceted exploration of identity, dispossession, memory and resistance, but also a film about the role of women in Palestinian society and the determination of pursuing one’s dream. The strength of their bonds and the courage they possess is something we greatly admired.”
Soualem added, “I’m very happy to work with Lightdox again as we had a great experience together on my previous film, Their Algeria. Even more exciting now is that we’ll discover new things together this time as the film takes a different path.
“By making this film, I follow the same path as the women in my family. I continue what they have started,” she added. “In fact, passing on our story has always been central. It is through storytelling that we break free.
“With our words, we fight against erasure. That is why I feel a constant urge to share these stories. To seize them before they vanish into oblivion, to preserve the images of a world rapidly disappearing. Images that stand as proof of a denied existence.”
Bye Bye Tiberias is a France-Belgium-Qatar-Palestine co-production in French and Arabic.
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