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In the Moving Bye Bye Tiberias, Hiam Abbass Considers the Cost of War


Palestinian-born actress Hiam Abbass will break your heart in this documentary portrait of her family, filmed by her daughter Lina Soualem.

Her family home was demolished long ago, and the dawning realization of how unrecognizable Tiberias is now — with its neon storefronts, a boardwalk blasting dance music, and groups of IDF trainees walking around — plays out on Abbass’s face. Home videos of family weddings that show the boisterous, patriotic pride of Palestinians dancing and singing in Deir Hanna are contrasted with footage of Israeli soldiers rolling through streets in tanks, taking panopticon positions in upper-level windows, patrolling sidewalks, and stopping cars. It provides just enough detail to communicate a sense of mourning; one long archival swivel pan that shows the streets of an abandoned village, with walls that were once marked in Arabic now papered with posters in Hebrew, gets the point across.

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