Synopsis
In her early twenties, Hiam Abbass left her native Palestinian village of Deir Hanna in Galilee to follow her dream of becoming an actress in Europe, leaving behind her mother, grandmother, and seven sisters. She settled in Paris where she had her daughter Lina. Every summer when Lina was a child, Hiam took her to the village to visit the family.
Thirty years later, Lina stumbles upon videotapes from the nineties retracing their Palestinian summer holiday. She watches the videos and recognizes the familiar faces of the women who marked her childhood: her younger mother, her grandmother Nemat, her great-grandmother Um Ali, her seven aunts. They seem to be the guardians of a temple in which all collective and intimate memories are preserved. Lina realizes her mother never spoke about why she left. She decides to return to the village and to question her mother’s bold choices, her chosen exile, and the way the women of their family have impacted both their lives. She revisits lost places, reactivates buried memories, collects untold stories and highlights four generations of daring Palestinian women who keep their story alive through the strength of their bonds, despite exile, dispossession, and heartbreak.
Bye Bye Tiberias pieces together images of the present, family footage from the nineties and historical archives to explore how memory, space, femininity, and resistance are passed down from one generation to the next. A journey into the lives of women who had to leave everything and start anew – over, and over again.
