Lina Soualem’s poignant new documentary traces the stories of four generations of Palestinian women in her family.
Idon’t know how to grieve a mother”, Hiam Abbass tells her daughter, director Lina Soualem, in this documentary/mediation on personal and geographical history. Hiam (the beloved Marcia in TV’s Succession), left her Palestinian village over 30 years ago to pursue her dream of becoming an actress, leaving behind her mother, grandmother and seven sisters. Soualem uses the stories of the women in her family to breathe life into the devastating history of their motherland, Palestine.
Blending tender interviews with her mother, camcorder footage from her childhood and archive footage of Palestine before the devastating 1948 Nakba and its aftermath, Soualem draws a fractured map that illustrates the disorienting evolution of stolen and abandoned lands. There is a persistent tension in the film between the history of those who were forcibly displaced, and Hiam, who made the autonomous choice to leave.
In an especially heartbreaking section, we have the privilege of meeting Nemat, Hiam’s mother, as they take her back to the village of Tiberias, where their family was expelled from to make way for the creation of Israel. Tiberias, of course, is unrecognisable now, more closely resembling a European Costa del Brit strip than a village in the middle east. The omnipresence of the Israeli military in the present-day scenes of Palestine makes Hiam’s lip curl frequently, it’s a gift to spend so much time with a face so deep in contemplation and mourning.
Though the rich and compelling history of the family and the land is undeniable, the gentle pacing of the documentary is effective because Hiam is always at its centre. In conversation with her daughter and her sisters, she is game to relitigate the actions of her youth – marrying an English man, moving to France to pursue acting, divorcing an English man – she shares teenage poetry and journal entries and endures bitter but loving jibes from her sisters (“Your mother was a real Don Juan!” they tell Soualem, and, “We all paid for your misdeeds” they tell Hiam).
In one especially moving scene, Hiam visits her old acting school to recreate the moment she told her father that she planned to leave Palestine. “Turn slightly to the camera,” Lina instructs, “What are you after Lina? It was very hard for me,” Hiam retorts.
The melancholy aspect of this documentary comes from its sense of patience and a willingness to sit with and actually listen to women who have kept the secrets of their scars, but melancholy is not a reason to avoid it, beyond it being a timely education on the deep familial devastation of war and displacement, Hiam is luminous as a documentary subject. The warm relationship she has with her director daughter means moments that could feel voyeuristic in another’s hands, only underscore the film’s underlying message – the necessity of matrilineal storytelling.
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Published 26 Jun 2024
I haven’t had the privilege of seeing Soualem’s work before.
A tender and well crafted study of motherdaughter remembrance.
It gets under your skin in and stays there in the best way.
Abdallah Al-Khatib’s extraordinary documentary captures daily life in the largest Palestinian refugee camp.
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