Born in Paris in 1990 to an Algerian father and a Palestinian mother, Lina Soualem is a filmmaker and actress whose work reflects, with rare sensitivity and clarity, the layers of belonging, pain, silence, and resistance that run through her family’s past and the colonized territories from which she descends. French-Palestinian-Algerian, her multiple identity is not only the starting point but also the living substance of her artistic creation. In 2025, Porto/Post/Doc will present a focus program on her work, featuring her two feature films, a carte blanche selection of films, and the television series in which she participated as story editor. The filmmaker will be in Porto to introduce these programs and lead a masterclass.
A graduate in History and Political Science from the University of La Sorbonne, Lina Soualem began her professional career as a programmer at the International Human Rights Film Festival in Buenos Aires. As a filmmaker, she has found an intimate and powerful language to interrogate not only the collective history of colonized peoples but also the most delicate bonds of her own family heritage. With two feature-length documentaries, Lina Soualem has built a filmography of international impact, awarded at numerous festivals and celebrated by critics as a new essential voice in contemporary documentary cinema.
“Their Algeria” had its world premiere at the Visions du Réel Festival in 2020 and immediately revealed itself as a work of great narrative and aesthetic maturity. The film follows the separation of the director’s Algerian grandparents after 62 years of marriage. But more than a portrait of a late breakup, the documentary delves into the dense silences that mark the lives of forced migrants, shaped by exile, nostalgia, and the impossibility of belonging. “Their Algeria” received several international awards, including Best First Film at the CINEMED Festival and Best Documentary at the CINEMANIA Festival.
Three years later, in “Bye Bye Tiberias” (2023)—featured in the international competition at Porto/Post/Doc 2023—Lina Soualem accompanies her mother, renowned Palestinian actress Hiam Abbass, on a visit to her hometown, documenting female family bonds and a Palestinian heritage on the verge of being forgotten. Premiered at the Venice International Film Festival, the film stands out for the delicacy with which it weaves together the political and the intimate, offering space for a tapestry of women’s voices: the grandmother, the mother, the aunts, and the filmmaker herself converse, laugh, remember, and reconstruct the past. In a context where Palestinian life is systematically silenced, Lina’s work emerges as a poetic refusal of erasure.
“Bye Bye Tiberias” won Best Documentary at the BFI London Film Festival and at CINEMED, as well as the Jury Prize at the Marrakech International Film Festival. It was also selected to represent Palestine at the 2024 Academy Awards and nominated for Best Documentary at the Film Independent Spirit Awards and at the 2025 César Awards.
Beyond the big screen, in “Oussekine”—a project she joined as researcher and story editor—Soualem contributed to a work of rare political and narrative courage by revisiting the murder of Malik Oussekine, a French-Algerian student killed by police in Paris in 1986. This case, which sparked national outrage, exposed the deep wounds of police violence and the contradictions of how immigrants were treated in a France that, under François Mitterrand, had promised a new era of integration. Through a meticulous reconstruction of archival materials, the production questions not only what has changed in the decades since the event, but also the mechanisms of silencing and the perpetuation of injustices that still resonate today.
By listening to and collecting these stories, the filmmaker provides keys to the collective history of peoples who have been colonized, silenced, and displaced. A human cinema that reveals—through real stories of love, exile, identity, and belonging—the scars of geopolitics.
FOCUS LINA SOUALEM
Bye Bye Tiberias
DOC, 2023, FRA, PSE, BEL, QAT, 80’
Trailer
Oussekine
SÉRIE, FIC, 2022, FRA, 70’
Trailer
Their Algeria
DOC, 2020, FRA, DZA, CHE, QAT, 72’
Trailer
Carte Blanche
Foragers, Jumana Manna
DOC, 2022, PSE, 64’
Trailer
Genealogy of Violence, Mohamed Bourouissa
FIC, 2022, FRA, 16’
Trailer
Life on the CAPS, Meriem Bennani
DOC, EXP, ANI, 2022, USA, 33’
Trailer
Moonscape, Mona Benyamin
FIC, 2020, PSE, 17’
Nation Estate, Larissa Sansour
FIC, 2012, DNK, PSE, 9’
Trailer
Pacific Club, Valentin Noujaim
DOC, 2023, FRA, QAT, 16’
The Flowers Stand Silently, Witnessing, Theo Panagogopoulos
DOC, 2024, GBR, 17’
Trailer
Operation supported by the Ministère de l'Europe et des Affaires étrangères and the Institut Français as part of the international promotion strategy for cultural and creative industries through the PICC program.
