Hiam Abbass

The relationships between women: those of friends, housekeeper/servant, student/teacher, and particularly the relationship of mother and daughter as they experience the difficult stages of menopause and adolescence: 47-year-old Tunisian professor Nadia appears fulfilled, but as she enters menopause she struggles with tension in her marriage, the physical and psychological symptoms of aging, and her fraught relationship with her eighteen-year-old daughter, Sarra, who lives her private life in secret.Read More »

Thirty years ago, Palestinian actress Hiam Abbass left her village in Galilee to follow her dreams of acting in France. In this poignant portrait, both deeply personal and inescapably political, filmmaker Lina Soualem — who is also Abbas’ daughter — traces the story of her mother, her mother’s mother, and their extended family, all of whose lives have been defined by separation, exile, and displacement. Interwoven with nostalgic home video recordings and rich archival footage of Palestinian life through the decades, Bye Bye Tiberias is a moving memoir about the burden of leaving, the endurance of memory, and the determination to forge one’s own destinies and identities.Read More »

In Gaza, two hairdressers and ten customers of various ages and backgrounds spend the day trapped in a beauty salon while Hamas police fight a gang in the street.Read More »

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Salma, a Palestinian widow – living there for decades – , has to stand up against her new neighbor, the Israeli Defense Minister, when he moves into his new house opposite her lemon grove, on the green line border between Israel and the West Bank. The Israeli security forces are quick to declare that Salma’s trees pose a threat to the Ministers safety and issue orders to uproot them.Read More »

Gaza, today. Sixty-year-old fisherman Issa is secretly in love with Siham, a woman who works at the market with her daughter Leila. When he discovers an ancient phallic statue of Apollo in his fishing nets, Issa hides it, not knowing what to do with this mysterious and potent treasure. Yet deep inside, he feels that this discovery will change his life forever. Strangely, his confidence starts to grow and eventually he decides to approach Siham.

First presented at the 2020 Venice Film Festival, official Palestine selection for the 2021 Academy Awards.Read More »

In Majdal Shams, the largest Druze village in Golan Heights on the Israeli-Syrian border, the Druze bride Mona is engaged to get married with Tallel, a television comedian that works in the Revolution Studios in Damascus, Syria. They have never met each other because of the occupation of the area by Israel since 1967; when Mona moves to Syria, she will lose her undefined nationality and will never be allowed to return home. Mona’s father Hammed is a political activist pro-Syria that is on probation by the Israeli government. His older son Hatten married a Russian woman eight years ago and was banished from Majdal Shams by the religious leaders and his father. His brother Marwan is a wolf trader that lives in Italy. His sister Amal has two teenager daughters and has the intention to join the university, but her marriage with Amin is in crisis. When the family gathers for Mona’s wedding, an insane bureaucracy jeopardizes the ceremony.Read More »

From Rotten Tomatoes
Once upon a time, there were two children who had the same nanny: Azur, blonde and blue-eyed, son of the lord of the castle, and Asmar, dark-skinned and black-eyed, the nurse’s child. Brought up like brothers, the children are suddenly torn apart. But Azur, haunted by the legend of the Djinn the nanny used to tell him, intends to find it in lands beyond the seas. When they grow up, the two foster brothers each go separate ways in search of the fairy. Daring rivals, they find magic lands in a medieval Maghreb, full of dangers and enchantments.Read More »

In the turbulent aftermath of the Tunisian revolution, young Samia (Sarra Hannachi) flees her homeland. She braves hostile seas in the crossing to France, but once there she finds that her struggles have only just begun. With no friends, no family, and – most crucially – no immigration papers, Samia has to figure out how to make a life and a living in a foreign land.

She meets a young man, Imed (Salim Kechiouche, Blue is the Warmest Color), and soon finds work in the employ of the elegant Leila (the inimitable Hiam Abbass, subject of an In Conversation With event at the Festival this year). But her presence in Leila’s middle-class household triggers a shift in its dynamics, and soon Samia is enmeshed in a web of sexual tension.Read More »

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Fatima, a strong-minded woman, is the lead masseuse of a hammam in Algiers. This is 1995 and the situation is tense in the capital. The day ahead promises to be hectic for all, and for Fatima in particular. Already, while walking to her place of work, she is the distant witness of a terrorist attack. At the hammam, Fatima should feel better, but the atmosphere proves electric in her small enclosed world, she has great difficulty in maintaining order. All the more as Meriem, a sixteen-year-old pregnant girl comes to take shelter at the hammam. And as irate brother, Mohamed, is after her to cleanse his honor in blood. Written by Guy BellingerRead More »