Hiam Abbass’ Palestinian Family Documentary ‘Bye Bye Tiberias’ Applauded at Marrakech Film Festival 

(L-R) Palestinian actress and director Hiam Abbass and French-Algerian director Lina Soualem pose on the red carpet during the 20th Marrakesh International Film Festival in Marrakech on November 25, 2023. (AFP)
(L-R) Palestinian actress and director Hiam Abbass and French-Algerian director Lina Soualem pose on the red carpet during the 20th Marrakesh International Film Festival in Marrakech on November 25, 2023. (AFP)
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Hiam Abbass’ Palestinian Family Documentary ‘Bye Bye Tiberias’ Applauded at Marrakech Film Festival 

(L-R) Palestinian actress and director Hiam Abbass and French-Algerian director Lina Soualem pose on the red carpet during the 20th Marrakesh International Film Festival in Marrakech on November 25, 2023. (AFP)
(L-R) Palestinian actress and director Hiam Abbass and French-Algerian director Lina Soualem pose on the red carpet during the 20th Marrakesh International Film Festival in Marrakech on November 25, 2023. (AFP)

Thirty years ago, Palestinian actor Hiam Abbass left her home to pursue her dreams of being in the movies, joining generations of women in her family who were shaped by exile and “learned to leave everything and start anew.”

That's one of the stories told in her director daughter Lina Soualem's documentary “Bye Bye Tiberias,” which received a standing ovation and shouts of “Long Live Palestine” on Saturday night at the Marrakech International Film Festival for the film's first screening in the Arab world.

The documentary, the Palestinian entry for next year's Academy Award for Best International Feature, follows Abbass and Soualem as the mother-daughter pair laugh, cry and tell the story of four generations of women in their family.

“Bye Bye Tiberias” first premiered at the Venice International Film Festival, more than a month before the start of the latest Israel-Hamas war, sparked by the militant group's deadly incursion into Israel on Oct. 7.

It is the only Palestinian film in competition in Marrakech, where festival organizers have, unlike past years, not held screenings in a popular square that has seen protests against the war.

Introducing the documentary on Saturday, Soualem and Abbass acknowledged it was an emotional time to present the film, thinking about the children and grandchildren of Palestinian refugees in Gaza.

Soualem declined to answer a question about how today's war affected reactions to her film. Speaking carefully, she later said that she felt the emotional response from festival audiences in Europe and the United States and noted her emphasis on offering a different Palestinian narrative amid current events, humanizing Palestinian women and the complex choices they make throughout their lives.

“Our hearts are heavy, seeing everything happening in Gaza — all the destruction and all the deaths, which we are mourning,” she said in an interview with The Associated Press on Sunday. “Every screening, there is a sense of repair and warmth. There’s a lot of people who feel that they cannot speak or they are silenced.”

“Bye Bye Tiberias” splices together intimate interviews of Soualem's family members, primarily her mother, Abbass, known to both Arab and Western audiences from her work in the television series “Succession” and “Ramy” as well as films such as “The Lemon Tree” in 2008, the Blade Runner 2049 in 2017, and “Gaza mon amour” in 2020.

It builds off Soualem's first documentary “Their Algeria” — another personal history about her grandparents' exile from North Africa and move to France amid war and economic downturn.

Unlike other Palestinian narratives, which focus on the broad diaspora, the Gaza Strip or the occupied West Bank, “Bye Bye Tiberias” documents a family displaced by the 1948 Arab-Israeli war from one city to another within modern-day Israel, where they retained citizenship but lived in a Palestinian village largely segregated from Jewish Israeli life.

Abbass rolls her mother Nemat in a wheelchair past Hebrew street signs and a now-dilapidated mosque in modern-day Tiberias as Soualem explains how the 1948 war upended her grandmother's education and “propelled her at full speed into history.”

Intimate interviews are spliced with excerpts from home movies shot by Soualem's father at their family's home in Deir Hanna, and archival footage spanning back to 1948.

That year, the British ordered the family to leave their home in Tiberias, a city on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. The home was later destroyed, the family was prohibited from returning and its members resettled far and wide, including in Syria and Deir Hanna, a Palestinian village within the borders of modern-day Israel.

“These images are the treasure of my memory that I don’t want to fade,” says Soualem, who narrates the documentary.

A generation later, living amid such tension “suffocated” Abbass, who emigrated to France three decades ago to pursue her dreams of becoming an actor.

“Today, I wish I could ask my mother if she forgives me for making a choice that was contrary to her traditions and her life,” Abbass says at one point in “Bye Bye Tiberias.”

For much of her daughter's life, Abbass rarely talked about her departure from the Middle East, not wanting to “open the gate to past sorrows,” Soualem says.

In the film, though, she does. Soualem captures Abbass mourning the loss of her mother, remembering performing in Jerusalem's Palestinian National Theatre, and peering across the Sea of Galilee trying to digest the enormity of what happened to Palestinian families like hers post-1948, as well as her choice to leave a land that holds great meaning to her.



International K-Pop Fans Thrill to Prospect of BTS Reunion 

Fans of K-pop band BTS wait for photos near an ARMY Bomb during the annual 2025 BTS Festa celebrating the BTS' debut anniversary in Goyang, South Korea, Friday, June 13, 2025. (AP)
Fans of K-pop band BTS wait for photos near an ARMY Bomb during the annual 2025 BTS Festa celebrating the BTS' debut anniversary in Goyang, South Korea, Friday, June 13, 2025. (AP)
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International K-Pop Fans Thrill to Prospect of BTS Reunion 

Fans of K-pop band BTS wait for photos near an ARMY Bomb during the annual 2025 BTS Festa celebrating the BTS' debut anniversary in Goyang, South Korea, Friday, June 13, 2025. (AP)
Fans of K-pop band BTS wait for photos near an ARMY Bomb during the annual 2025 BTS Festa celebrating the BTS' debut anniversary in Goyang, South Korea, Friday, June 13, 2025. (AP)

Thousands of international fans of K-pop megastars BTS gathered on Friday in the suburbs of Seoul amid mounting excitement over an expected reunion of the group after its members complete mandatory service in the South Korean military.

This year's BTS Festa marks the 12th anniversary of the group, which last performed together in 2022 and has not toured since 2019 because of the global pandemic and subsequent military service obligations of its members.

It was unclear if any of the recently discharged performers would appear at the festival organized by the group's management agency, HYBE.

But that did not dampen the enthusiasm of fans, some of whom flew in from around the world hoping to spot some of the superstars at the gathering or at a pair of solo concerts by BTS rapper J-Hope as he wraps up his "Hope on the Stage" world tour.

"I want to enjoy everything because there are many things to do here and ... I hope to see the guys maybe," said Karla Linan Saucede, 33, who travelled from Mexico with her sister and friends.

"It's gone past excitement and into almost being numb," said Ayla O'Ryan, 45, from Scotland, adding that she planned a visit this month to practice Korean in the capital so that she could attend.

BTS' members Jimin and Jungkook discharged from the South Korean military on Wednesday, become the fifth and sixth to complete their service. Members RM and V were discharged on Tuesday and the last to finish will be Suga on June 21.

While details of a reunion have not been released, the group is expected to hold its largest ever world tour in 2026, says NH Securities, one of South Korea's largest investment firms.

Shares in HYBE jumped 11.3% in June as brokerages raised their sales estimates and target price for the agency ahead of the group's comeback.