Hiam Abbas, winner of the Itinérance d’Alès festival prize: “Cinema gives a voice back to those who are deprived of it”

Hiam Abbass : “Je pense être une forme de “nomade” dans le monde du cinéma.” MAXPPP – Fred Dugit

The international actress and director is the first woman to receive the Itinérances prize, thus honoring a lifetime driven by a love of others and of cinema. Encounter.

This Thursday, March 28, you will receive the Itinérances prize, which wants to thank a cinema professional for everything he has brought to this art. How do you experience this recognition and what this award could possibly mean for you??

I am very grateful, because with Antoine Leclerc (festival director, Editor's note), there is a form of friendship that has been created over the years of this festival’s existence. It created a form of loyalty to my work. He's been trying to organize a presence for me for a while, with a few retrospective films. I just had to be able to be there for the public in Alès. But I hadn't thought about this price at all! This prize for me is a friendly gift from the Alès team, which does me honor. I can only be grateful. Especially towards its name: Itinérances. I feel like it’s something that fits very much with who I am. Because I think I'm a form of “nomad” in the world of cinema.

You were born in Nazareth in 1960. What is the first memory you have of your encounter with cinema ?

I just remember that there was an event in my village when I was little. I saw that everyone was taking chairs to sit in the central square. I understood that it was a very important event. I saw a big screen. I remember sitting in a little low chair and watching something that was fascinating, and that brought everyone together! But, frankly, I have no memory of the film that was shown! I am unable to remember anything except the pleasure of seeing this "UFO" ! At the time, we didn’t have a TV at home. The audiovisual world was non-existent for me. Then the TV arrived. I was able to see an Egyptian film every Friday evening. I then encountered Arab cinema during my high school years. Then came the films in English, it was a language that I already really liked.

Nothing around me promised a way out of this. Becoming an actress was non-existent and inaccessible

It was then as a teenager, then during your studies in Haifa (Israel), that you immersed yourself in photography and theater?

I started theater at school. But in high school, I had a teacher who was able to take me further. They offered us very well-written plays, with eloquence and diction. He believed in me a lot and encouraged me. Except that at the end of high school, the profession of an actress was not, in my time, something that one could easily envisage! Nothing in my surroundings promised a way out of this. Becoming an actress was non-existent and inaccessible. That’s why I chose photography, which was for me a way to perhaps exist artistically differently. But I didn’t think at the time that photography was going to disappear from my life so that acting and theater would take up all the space.

You then went to Europe, to London then to Paris, to build your career. Can we say that she was marked by two important things: work and meetings? Including the one with Raja Amiri, director of Saint Rouge, a film which revealed you in 2001& nbsp;?

She’s really the first. When I arrived in Paris, I didn't speak French. I couldn't imagine building a career there. I spoke better English. I did little things here and there, until Raja and Satin Rouge arrived. This is the film that opened the big door for me.

How did you then manage to cross the Atlantic? À arrived in Hollywood to play alongside Steven Spielberg (Munich), Denis Villeneuve (Blade Runner 2049) or more recently in the series Succession on the HBO channel ?

I never calculated all that! For me, cinema is a language, a vocation that has found itself in my life. I followed the request. And slowly things began to take shape! But it’s true that when I left Palestine to end up in London, I only had a silhouette in a feature film and a role in a medium-length film. Afterwards I had to learn a language and the culture of the country that welcomed me, France. But for the rest, things happened without my intention of causing them. When Alejandro Gonzalez Iñarritu offered to be a coach for Moroccan actors on Babel, I accepted in the desire to do things well, without really knowing what I could really contribute! Then at that moment I received a phone call from Spielberg casting who told me about a role in Munich, then about accompanying him with the actors playing Palestinian characters. I didn't want coaching to take up a whole place in my job, but I said ok. But once on set, the welcome he gave me and the trust he gave me from the start meant that, day after day , I found myself being responsible for the actors for the entire shoot. It overwhelmed me.

It’s also this roaming and these encounters that your daughter Lina Soualem wanted to tell in Bye Bye Tibériade, the documentary that she made on your own life ?

That’s not really why she made her film. For her it was a continuation of her first film (Leur Algérie, Editor's note), where she questioned her Algerian half through her father (< em>the actor Zinedine Soualem, Editor’s note). Lina is French with two origins: Algerian and Palestinian. Two identities that are not very easy to carry. Algeria with its history with France, and Palestine with its history which still catches up with us today. She really wanted to explore her two origins, but with the links of her two parents. But Lina never really wanted to make a film about her mother! For Lina, the link between her and the other women in her Palestinian family is her mother. She questions her to be able to trace this history of four generations of Palestinian women.

It is not possible that today we treat immigrants like thieves of scraps of bread.

What, in your opinion, should cinema bring to our current world, in the face of tragedies, including that of the Middle East, of which it is a victim ?

This question, today, comes at a very difficult time for Palestine. For me, the place that cinema must take today is very important, in this world where we have the impression of receiving so much information, 24 hours a day, as if the ;rsquo;being human becomes just a number. We have the impression that cinema gives a voice back to those who are deprived of it. It is a place where ideas, feelings, joy, laughter, solidarity with others are conveyed. I think of cinema today as a way to bring people together. To remain human, and to move away from everything that prevents us from considering the other as equal, as a loved one. I can no longer stand these stories of racial hatred, anti-Semitism, the denial of the existence of the other. It is not possible that today we treat immigrants like thieves of scraps of bread, that we do not understand their lives, their journeys! All that for me, cinema today has a role to play in this.

Hiam Abbass will receive the Itinérances prize on the Cratère stage, Thursday September 29, at 8:45 p.m. then will present the film Les Citronniers by Eran Riklis. Earlier in the day, at 4:30 p.m. in the next room, she will give a "film lesson" where she will return to her career and her work with the public present. I subscribe to read more