Exile to expression: how Lina Soualem’s film challenges colonial narratives

Céline Semaan and filmmaker Lina Soualem explore the deeply personal and political dimensions of Lina’s latest film, Bye Bye Tiberias (2023). The documentary tells the story of Lina’s mother, renowned Palestinian actress Hiam Abbass, and the experiences of four generations of women in their family. It traces Abbass’ departure from Tiberias, Palestine, in the 1980s, as she pursued a career in acting, and reflects on the generational trauma, resilience, and displacement faced by Palestinian women.

In the interview, Lina discusses the complexities and contradictions of navigating life in exile, while exploring her family’s story. The film draws from personal archives and interviews to offer a broader reflection on Palestinian history and the ongoing impact of colonialism. Lina emphasizes the role of art in challenging political narratives, giving voice to stories often silenced or erased.

‘Artists are meant to question and challenge the system, even if they navigate within it.’ —Lina

Lina

CÉLINE: Your film Bye Bye Tiberias: Why is it so important for you to have this film understood, seen, witnessed by an American audience?

LINA: The film has been shown in the US, which I wasn’t expecting, but we were nominated to represent Palestine at the Oscars. This generated a lot of interest from the US, which is not easy with auteur films and documentaries, especially Arab and Palestinian narratives. It was amazing to share the film there because of the large immigrant and diasporic population.

Many people in the US come from exilic or diasporic backgrounds, allowing the story to resonate on multiple levels, not just the Palestinian experience but the broader diasporic experience. This is significant because it allows us to be seen on a human level, beyond the stigmas often attached to Palestinians. I want to quote Karim Katan, who co-wrote part of the voices in the film. He says that we often talk about Palestinians being “dehumanized,” but that’s not even accurate because we were never truly humanized in the first place. We’ve never been allowed to exist as equals, as fully human in the eyes of others.

So, it was powerful to be able to exist and exchange with people who understood, particularly those from immigrant backgrounds. My goal wasn’t to address white Americans but those who could connect with the diasporic experience. Of course, if others relate to the film, that’s incredible too—it allows us to be part of the world in a meaningful way.

CÉLINE: In your film, you focus on existing—not performing identity or pain. There are moments that simply capture life, what you called a “proof of life.” You said it’s not about dehumanization but about never being humanized, and being purposefully erased. How do you see the role of documenting and archiving as a way to present this proof of life to the world?

Lina

LINA: For us, existing through our images and stories is essential. There’s always this fear of disappearing—our families have faced this through the Nakba, through displacement. And that threat is very real today, whether in Gaza, the West Bank, or even inside the 1948 occupied state where Palestinian identity is constantly suppressed.

Whenever I filmed, I felt that any moment could become an archive. You never know if you’ll see the same place again, if you’ll be able to return, or what you’ll find when you do. Many places our families knew are gone, and when they still exist, we’re often erased from them. For me, it was crucial to immortalize our presence, our stories, especially the stories of the women in my family. These are not just personal stories but part of our collective memory, which has never been formally written down. It’s built from our intimate memories, and we all have a responsibility to preserve them.

It’s like we have to constantly prove to ourselves that we exist, every day. This inner struggle is a consequence of colonization, as Fanon wrote about. Colonization erases not just land and property but also identity and the language to define yourself. Through film, we create a new language, one that allows us to tell our own stories and push back against stigmatization. In the media, Palestinians are often only seen through violence, destruction, and death. But for me, resistance is also in the everyday—living, not just surviving. Celebrating our culture, birthdays, weddings—this too is resistance, and it’s at the heart of the film.

I grew up with memories of Palestine that were so different from how we are portrayed. I wanted to show our truth, to exist in our truth. It’s surreal that the film was released during the war on Gaza, in the midst of genocide. I finished it in August 2023 after six years of work, and the first screenings were in September. After October 7, the film took on an even deeper meaning, but the mission remains the same. I’ve always been speaking about the need to exist and resist dehumanization. For me, it was about the intensity and the need, like I was on a mission and had to keep going.

CÉLINE: Yes, because it didn’t really begin in October. This is your second film, right? I haven’t seen the first one, but I was talking to someone yesterday who mentioned that it was about your father’s side of the family. There seems to be a big contrast with your mother’s side. Could you talk about the two projects side by side?

LINA: Yeah. My father is from Algeria, and the first film was about my paternal grandparents, Aisha and Mabruk, Algerian immigrants who came to France in the 1950s. They separated when they were 80, and I filmed their story, retracing their life and exile. I come from two histories of colonialism, and the difference between my Algerian and Palestinian families is stark.

The Algerians stayed silent to survive. After Algeria’s independence, they buried themselves in silence to cope with the trauma of colonization. In the first film, I had to break that silence to understand our story, my connection to my grandparents’ homeland, and France, the colonial country where I was born. I needed to put them back into history, because growing up, it felt like my grandparents had no history. Even in school, they never taught us colonial history.

The difference with my Palestinian side is that, instead of silence, we had to tell our stories in order to survive. There were always stories, but they were fragmented. Many family members we’ve never been able to see again—some are refugees, some stayed in ‘48. So, the goal of Bye Bye Tiberias wasn’t to break silence, but to piece together the scattered stories, like putting together a puzzle. Colonization breaks linearity, so this was about reconstructing that.

Lina

CÉLINE: Absolutely, I relate. My book is non-linear for that very reason. The act of remembering, itself, isn’t linear. In your film, there are moments within moments, like Russian dolls—layers of moments. As you open one, you find another. There are these peaceful moments, pockets of peace, joy, and laughter. Even in the dramatized scene, when your mother goes back to the theater—what’s it called?

LINA: Hakawati Theater.

CÉLINE: Right, Hakawati. When she relives that moment, it’s incredibly powerful. Just talking about it now makes me emotional, because in those moments, we get to witness our humanity, which has been robbed from us.

‘We are actively fighting for liberation. In the process of liberation, we should allow freedom for everyone. Pointing fingers contradicts the goal of liberation. We are free to be who we are while fighting for that freedom.’ —Lina

LINA: Yes, and you know, I have a friend, a Palestinian from Jerusalem, who saw the film in Europe last fall, at a time when she couldn’t go back home. She told me, “Thank you for reminding us of the beauty of our culture and our country.” It’s hard because when you constantly see negative representations of yourself in the media, even if you know it’s not true, it still affects you. It’s so important to remind ourselves of who we truly are.

For me, it wasn’t something I had to force. It felt natural. I just put the camera in front of my aunts and my mother, and the humor was there. Humor is such a typical part of our culture, a way to cope with reality. We come from a tradition of literature and poetry—as Palestinians, Lebanese, Syrians— and we’ve lost so much of that because they’ve destroyed our archives and erased some of our thinkers.

While making the film and writing poetry for it, I discovered that my family was writing poetry too—my mother, my grandfather—and I had no idea! It felt like these pieces were coming together, and I realized I was part of something much bigger than myself. I wasn’t starting from scratch; I was continuing a legacy that was passed down to me. It was incredibly moving, like I was part of a process that I couldn’t escape, even if I wanted to.

CÉLINE: It’s like weaving resistance from past generations to the present. People often misunderstand resistance, thinking it’s about bearing arms or fighting. Even the language we use can be violent—like “fighting back.” But so much of our resistance is soft resistance, about building, remembering, preserving, and protecting our culture. In your film, there’s so much softness. The term “soft power” comes to mind—it’s a concept that keeps reemerging. How do you reconcile the contradictions between softness and strength? People often think softness is weakness.

LINA: First of all, I wanted the women in my family, and in the film, to exist in their full complexity. They have vulnerabilities, contradictions, and strengths, but they are also women in a patriarchal world. Their ways of fighting aren’t always in the foreground; sometimes it’s through passing down love and values like forgiveness to their children. That’s a powerful form of resistance. It’s almost a miracle that they’ve not only transmitted these things to us but also raised us with love, allowing us to want to share that love with the world. When you come from violent histories, you’d expect people to be stuck in cycles of violence, but what Palestinians have become is truly miraculous.

I don’t like the term “resilience” because the West often uses it to box us in, as if we’re simply resilient people. For me, it’s a life force, something beyond resistance. It’s like the Algerians who kept living in France, the colonial country that treated them as subjects. The fact that they lived, educated their children, and we, their descendants, were born and raised in France with the same tools as the settlers, is a miracle. That’s what we should highlight—not the extremes of violence and revenge, but the quiet resistance through language, survival, and a desire to keep our culture alive, to educate our children, and fill them with hope and dreams. Both forms of resistance can coexist, and there are many ways to struggle.

CÉLINE: There’s a lot of misunderstanding in the West. Maybe it’s because we have the privilege of being able to return to our lands, which softens our fight and our resistance. There’s this notion that we have to “toughen up,” that we need to detach from our humanity to exist here. Lately, I see fewer people in my culture celebrating—fewer posts about weddings, birthdays, or joy. People tell me they feel guilty about celebrating. But if we feel guilty for our joy, hasn’t the colonizer and its war machine already won? It’s like we’re internalizing the pain in the form of guilt, which is dangerous.

LINA: Yes, it’s normal to feel guilty. I don’t think we can escape it. But we have to respect that everyone copes in their own way. We shouldn’t judge those who continue to celebrate life or those who withdraw and choose to be more discreet. The diversity in how we deal with things is what makes us culturally rich. It’s dehumanizing when the West tries to essentialize us into one thing, whether as Palestinian women or Arabs in general. It’s so important to claim our complexity because that’s who we are, especially as Palestinians, and it’s who we will continue to be.

We are actively fighting for liberation. In the process of liberation, we should allow freedom for everyone. Pointing fingers contradicts the goal of liberation. We are free to be who we are while fighting for that freedom.

CÉLINE: Exactly. Liberation and complexity go hand in hand. It’s a dance, and in this dance, we embrace contradictions. For example, your film shows your mother wanting to leave Palestine to follow her dream, which she couldn’t pursue while she was there. That’s a contradiction, but it’s real. The film invites the viewer to accept that two opposing things can coexist. The West struggles with this idea. How do you think controlling our own media and narratives could help teach the West about embracing contradictions?

LINA: This is the thing, they don’t allow us to be complex because when we are complex, we become equal. They want to control the narrative about us and define us on their terms. But when we use our language, art, and literature to define ourselves, it gives us the power to invent new ways of seeing ourselves—ways that aren’t new at all but were erased.

For example, I think of Mouloud Feraoun, an Algerian writer and fighter against colonialism. He wrote Les Moutons de Guerre in French, and he used that language as a force against colonization. Edward Said said exile is the greatest tragedy a person can face, but at the same time, it’s a way to reinvent yourself in the margins. This diasporic experience allows us to transform memory and create new language, reconnecting with how our ancestors defined themselves when they were free.

This is crucial because it gives us a history when they’re trying to erase it, trying to rewrite our history through their lens. Building bridges between the past and present is necessary. Even in France, as an Algerian, when I talk about colonization, they say, “That’s the past. Move on.” But we are still living in a neo-colonial world. The French are always talking about their identity and ancestors from centuries ago, yet we’re told to forget ours. We will never stop connecting with our ancestors because they constitute who we are.

As immigrants, or children of immigrants, we will always ask, “What if they hadn’t colonized us? What if I had been born there?” Imagining that is powerful. Decolonization isn’t just tangible; it’s also about our imaginations. It’s about envisioning what we could have been and what we can be, in many diverse ways. That’s why all forms of expression—art, activism, journalism— are valid in the process of liberation. They are what build nations and societies. And we have the right to that.

CÉLINE: Yes, absolutely. Building on that, politics is fundamentally about bringing back into focus what is often pushed aside. When people say some topics are too political to discuss, it’s often because these issues are simplified or purified in ways that overlook our contributions to culture and the larger movement of international solidarity. It’s not a one-sided endeavor; it’s about embracing plurality. Sometimes, we may not have a clear way to conclude with a sense of permission, especially when we’re often discouraged from creating freely. What wisdom would you offer young creatives who see the world as it is, don’t necessarily want to be politicized, but find that their work naturally becomes political?

LINA: Art is inherently political. I’ve never considered art as something separate from politics. Art is a way of asserting your existence and your voice, and when you come from our histories and stories, everything we create or say becomes political. It’s a privilege to view art as non-political because for us, it’s always tied to our lived realities. I believe artists are meant to question and challenge the system, even if they navigate within it. You don’t always have to foreground the political message—let it emerge naturally, in subtle ways if you wish. What’s most important is to follow and trust your instincts, because in creating, you are searching for your unique language.

For example, with my first film, I was often told in France that it wasn’t a “universal” story, that no one would care about two Algerians and their story of exile. I had to fight to trust my instincts, to believe that people could connect with our stories. It wasn’t easy, especially as a woman, because we are often asked to second-guess ourselves or set aside our feelings. But it’s crucial to try, even if it doesn’t work right away. You try again and again until you find your voice. And if one path doesn’t work, you adapt and try another way. But today, I believe it’s necessary to be active in that sense—art and activism go hand in hand.

CÉLINE: The personal is indeed universal in so many ways. That’s what politics is about—being able to connect. Thank you so much, Lina, for the beautiful gift of this film, and for sharing your thoughts. We’re excited to have you as part of EIP. Thank you!

‘It’s dehumanizing when the West tries to essentialize us into one thing, whether as Palestinian women or Arabs in general. It’s so important to claim our complexity because that’s who we are, and it’s who we will continue to be.’ —Lina

Lina Soualem portait