Bye Bye Tiberias

Directed by Lina Soualem, Bye Bye Tiberias follows actress Hiam Abbass as she returns to her homeland of Palestine with her daughter. It’s relatively interesting subject matter that’s employed to periodically passable yet mostly interminable effect by Soualem, as the filmmaker delivers a padded-out documentary that is, for the most part, akin to watching someone else’s home movies – with the far-from-engrossing atmosphere compounded by an ongoing emphasis on Abbass’ family history. (Without a real entry point for the viewer, it remains just about impossible to wholeheartedly care about any of this, ultimately.) And while the picture admittedly does contain a small handful of affecting moments, including (and especially) a scene wherein Abbas gets emotional talking about her mother, Bye Bye Tiberias, which is rife with cute but pointless interludes (eg Abbas and her sisters reminisce), predominately comes off as a tiresome vanity project that hardly has enough concrete material to fill a five minute short let alone a full-length feature.

** out of ****