“I haven’t been to Berlin since 2015,” says Palestinian actress Hiam Abbass, 65, as she settles into a chair in a private room at the Grand Hyatt in Potsdamer Platz. If you’re going to make a return, you might as well do it with a bang.
This year, she is one of the major guests of honour at the Berlin International Film Festival, with two films – one in competition and the other in the Panorama sidebar – as well as an In Conversation event. “They have been trying to have me for a masterclass for the past few years,” she says, “but I’ve been working a lot".
True enough. In the US, she has collaborated with Steven Spielberg (Munich), Ridley Scott (Exodus: Gods and Kings) and Denis Villeneuve (Blade Runner 2049) and, perhaps most significantly, earned an Emmy nomination for her role in HBO’s Succession, opposite Brian Cox, as the long-suffering, estranged wife of tyrannical media tycoon Logan Roy. Yet, she has remained loyal to European and Middle Eastern cinema – as evidenced by her two Berlinale selections: the Tunisian competition entry In a Whisper and the Lebanese drama Only Rebels Win.
The latter reunites her with Beirut-born filmmaker Danielle Arbid, who directed her in the 1998 short Raddem, when both were near the beginnings of their careers. This latest film, also set in Beirut, casts Abbass as Suzanne, a sixty-something widow who gets a shot at happiness when she meets Osmane (Amine Benrachid), a young, undocumented Sudanese man. After coming to his aid during a racist attack, she takes him in and gradually falls for him, despite a near 40-year age gap.
Given that older women dating younger men is often stigmatised, does she feel it is possible for women of a certain age to find love with a more youthful partner?
“Of course. I mean, look at France, [President] Macron and his wife, right? I mean, it’s not something that corresponds necessarily to a certain culture. It’s just in the eyes of the world… once you became a mother and you had your children, you don’t have the right to life. And for me, Danielle sends her character to life. Contrary to a lot of societies, what they do, they send their elder people to death before the time comes.”
Intriguingly, Arbid wanted to shoot in Beirut despite waves of Israeli attacks on Lebanon over the past 18 months. In the end, a Lebanese crew filmed in the streets of Beirut, which were then projected behind the actors working in a studio in Paris.
“Israel attacks Lebanon… everything became almost an act of resistance, in a way,” says Abbass. “Our love to each other was fed with wanting to exist, because the movie had to exist, right? Without being sloganistic, honestly, this is exactly how it felt. We all wanted to do the movie.”
I wonder if Abbass – who was born in Nazareth to a family of Palestinian citizens of Israel and has lived in Paris since the late 1980s – now views making a film as a political act.
“For me, it is,” she says. “I mean, today, I say it easily, much more than before. Before I thought, ‘Oh, the artistic… whatever.’ Today, there is no more lie. There is no more pretending.”
For those without a voice, she adds: “I speak for all of them, and I have the responsibility to speak for all of them, and not only in Palestine… I’m not saying I’m a politician. I just have to be political. Because for me, every act of daily life today that we’re doing is political.”
It is also what drew her to In a Whisper. A powerful exploration of sexuality, she plays the mother of a young woman who returns to Tunis after the sudden death of her uncle in the film. “Through death, she is going to face so many secrets from the family that are going to reflect her own difference,” says Abbass, who first met Tunisian writer-director Leyla Bouzid at the Cinematheque in Toulouse. “I think she was very afraid to address me, because she was very afraid of my accent… that it was not right for the character.”
Needless to say, she is spot on. That Abbass can morph from a Tunisian mother to a Lebanese widow demonstrates her chameleon-like skill as an actress. But don’t ask her to self-analyse.
“I don’t know how to explain how I do things,” she protests. Nor can she quite explain her success in Hollywood. “I’m lucky,” she admits. “I get overwhelmed and surprised by the fact that they want me for something. So I say, ‘Why me?’ When Spielberg wanted me to play in Munich, I told my agency, ‘Come on, you’re kidding.’”
Two decades on, she is still going strong. “It just feels part of a journey that I pursue in my life, and I’m so happy.”
Only Rebels Win and In a Whisper are screening at the Berlin International Film Festival
