Reseñas de la crítica

One of the greatest qualities of Bye Bye Tiberias is its staunch refusal to filter the movie through a structure evocative of traditional narrative films... [Soualem's] has a more free-flowing design reflective of the complicated ways the past can intertwine with the present... a quality that also encapsulates the messiness of reckoning with familial trauma.

Soualem crafts a layered diary of her lineage as much as that of her country... Bye Bye Tiberias unravels both like a personal diary, an intimate and troubled journey of the rich tapestry of Palestinian history and the personal stories embedded within it, and an examination of time and space through images.

The documentary may be understated, with its long dialogue-free stretches. But the distractions that pull Abbass’s stare away from her daughter’s lens give Bye Bye Tiberias a pointedly political backbone that the documentary buoys with clever editing and a tangible self-assuredness.

“Bye bye Tiberias” may be an attempt at consolidating histories of four generations of women, but watching it gave me a feeling similar to looking at a game of pinball... the sequences ensue in what feels like an arbitrary, stream-of-consciousness-like manner.

A poetic essay from Soualem’s POV about her mother and her forebears that combines memory and fantasy and provides a jumping off point for discussing the various generations.

Soualem’s sentimental journey with her actress mother Hiam Abbass becomes a powerful celebration of lives marked by separation, exile and erasure.

Bye Bye Tiberias is about a lot of things – the weight of ambition versus the weight of family; the lingering trauma of exile; guilt and love and regret – but above all it’s about the importance of bearing witness, and of recording.

Soualem later says in voiceover that a favourite mantra of her mother’s is, “Don’t open the gate to past sorrows.” But Bye Bye Tiberias is a shared exercise in opening the gate and sowing the gardens of the past so that future generations may grow.

Soualem deftly weaves an affecting ceremonial patchwork for the women in her family... [her] film is an instructive and touching mosaic where past and present overlap, and a keen sense of heritage and transmission shines through.