To be Arab is to be political, whether or not we choose it. From Rabat to Baghdad and beyond, we are often expected — if not obligated — to constantly articulate, defend, and reflect on who we are, what we experience, and how we respond to current events. Even if the events are painful, triggering, or uncomfortable, staying silent is rarely an option, as it can, and will most likely be, interpreted as taking a complicit stance with marginalizing narratives.
From the moment you’re old enough to think, you’re expected to choose a side. Most people fall into one of two camps: those who step up and say their piece, and those who don’t. No judgment either way, but for some, staying quiet just isn’t on the table. That’s exactly how it was for Algerian-Palestinian filmmaker Lina Soualem. The daughter of two acclaimed actors, Hiam Abbass and Zinedine Soualem, the 35-year-old recalls having had to learn, early on, how to speak up in a room already filled with the weight of her parents’ names.
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“Since I was a kid, I was always around my parents on movie sets, and honestly, I found it boring,” Soualem confessed to MILLE. “I didn’t really understand who they were, because they were always playing characters. They were my parents, but I had to call them by their real names on set— not baba or mama— just so they’d respond.” That disconnect, she revealed, sparked her desire to find her own voice. Her parents encouraged her to pursue her studies, partly to do what they hadn’t, and partly to learn how to think critically about the world around her.
“I started working and exploring journalism and cultural diplomacy, and I realized I was really drawn to cinema. But I needed to find my own path,” she revealed. “That moment came when I began watching documentaries, around the age of 22 or 23, while I was living in Argentina doing a journalism internship. I remember feeling frustrated with how journalism expected us to be neutral and objective. For me, that felt impossible— I had political opinions, I had a point of view, and I wanted to express it. And I realized that documentary filmmaking would give me the space to do that. It would allow me to combine my interest in social and political issues with storytelling and artistic expression,” she added.
For someone like Soualem who can’t contain or sanitize how they think or feel, filmmaking naturally became her outlet. Her foray into documentary-making started after her grandparents in Algeria separated at the age of 80, prompting her to pick up a camera and document a part of their story, and in turn, her own. But as is often the case, identity isn’t just personal. For Soualem, telling her story became a way to contribute to a broader collective one, preserving intimate moments that offer a window into an era she never lived, but felt deeply connected to.
“When you come from exilic or colonial histories, there’s no way to talk about your intimate life without connecting it to the broader colonial or postcolonial context you were raised in, and everything you’ve inherited from it,” she explained. “For me, I always felt the need to explore that. At first, I did so through my studies in history, thinking I needed to understand the wider historical background before anything else. But while studying colonization— especially in Algeria— I realized how little I actually knew about my own family, and how my grandparents lived through it. How did they experience the war? What did they see? How did they feel about being considered ‘French Muslim subjects’ under the French Empire stripped of rights, identity, and dignity? They never really talked about it, but I could feel that trauma was passed down, even in silence. And all of that came together when I started filming them. I had this goal in mind, even if I wasn’t sure yet if it would work.”
And it did. The film earned her praises, awards, and perhaps most importantly, the confidence that she could forge her own path in cinema without living in her parents’ shadow. Their Algeria, released in 2020 during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, marked her official breakthrough. And from there, she never looked back, gaining more recognition with each new project.
Growing up in the diaspora, Soualem often felt like her experience of immigration was too specific to connect with others. But over time, she came to realize that stories of exile are common across the Arab world. Nearly every family has someone who left, never returned, or came back and stayed silent about the past.
“When I showed the film in Ramallah, my family was there along with many members of the Palestinian audience, and they all managed to connect with the story. They’re living under colonization themselves, and they related to the silence of our ancestors, who, because of trauma, never passed down their stories. When you’re colonized, you’re stripped of your identity, and it becomes difficult to define yourself— you’re always struggling to find the words,” she said.
For many, the film opened a door to learning more about Algeria’s colonial history—details they hadn’t been taught but that helped them make sense of their own present. As Soualem put it, “Somehow, learning more about Algeria’s past helped them reflect on their own present, as if understanding that history gave them a clearer lens for what they’re living through now.”
Building on the success of her directorial debut, Soualem turned to the other half of her heritage with a second documentary focused on the Palestinian experience. Bye Bye Tiberias tells the story of her mother, Succession and Ramy star Hiam Abbass, tracing her departure from the Palestinian village of Deir Hanna to pursue a career in film and chase her dream of being an actress. Years later, Abbass returns to the village with her daughter to reflect on the choices she made and the stories of the women she had to leave behind. True to her signature style — archiving memory as a means of understanding and preservation — the film was met with critical acclaim and even earned her a nomination at the prestigious Festival de Cannes. Today, it stands as her most recognized work, especially in light of the ongoing genocide in Palestine.
Working on Bye Bye Tiberias was far more emotionally taxing for Soualem than her first film. Unlike the Algerian struggle, which she says is at least partially acknowledged, the Palestinian reality is still actively denied. “What’s happening in Palestine is denied all the time,” she explained. “Palestinians are misrepresented, and it leads to massacres. It was very hard emotionally.”
What kept her grounded was the resilience of the women in her family, particularly those who lived through the Nakba. “What I’m going through is nothing, it’s a dot,” she said, adding that reflecting on their strength helped her push forward.
“It’s about honoring all these people— especially our elders— who not only managed to survive, but continued to live, to celebrate their culture, and to raise their children with powerful values,” she continued, quoting Faïza Guène, the French-Algerian director: “Our grandmothers, who were humiliated, raped during colonization, brought to France and exploited— they raised children who are now studying, sharing, and carrying forward meaningful values.“
Despite the trauma, she emphasized, they never taught revenge. “It’s a miracle that after everything they went through, they remained so dignified. Because honestly, it would be completely valid for us to be angry, bitter, and stuck in rage. That would make perfect sense. But we’ve gone beyond that. We’ve transcended it,” she said.
Reflecting on both experiences, Soualem explained that while Algeria and Palestine share parallel histories of struggle, the way those histories are treated is markedly different. In Algeria, although the war of independence remains a taboo topic and many of its details are still unknown or rarely discussed, the war itself is at least acknowledged. Palestine, on the other hand, is often denied entirely— its very existence questioned— and speaking up about it can, more times than not, come at a personal or professional cost.
“The Palestinian story is being systematically erased—our history, our archives, and even the present. Through massacres and attempts to wipe out our identity, it’s a matter of surviving at this point,” she said.
“The most important thing is to go back to the past so that we can advance. If we don’t have access to our memory, we cannot continue. If we don’t have reparation and justice, we cannot forgive. This is the main struggle now, and it’s such a privileged struggle when you compare it to the people on the ground that are being killed. The emotional challenges fade when you know what’s at stake,” she concluded, leaving us wondering where her lens will turn next.
