| Hiam Abbass | |
|---|---|
| Born | November 30, 1960 Nazareth, Israel[1] |
| Ethnicity | Palestinian |
| Citizenship | Israel |
| Occupation | Actress, Director |
Hiam Abbass (Arabic: هيام عباس; born November 30, 1960), also known as Hiam Abbas or Hiyam Abbas, is a Palestinian actress[1] and an Arab citizen of Israel. She is known for her roles in the films Satin Rouge (2002), Haifa (1996), Paradise Now (2005), The Syrian Bride (2004), Free Zone (2005), Dawn of the World (2008), The Visitor (2008), Lemon Tree (2008), and Amreeka (2009). She had a small role in Steven Spielberg's Munich, a film depicting the response to the Munich Massacre, where she also served as a dialect and acting consultant.[1]
She directed two short films, Le Pain (2001), and La Danse éternelle (2004). She portrays humanitarian Hind al-Husseini in Julian Schnabel's film Miral (2010), based on the life of Husseini and her orphanage.
Abbass was born in Nazareth, Israel[1] and was raised in a traditional Muslim village by the Lebanese border.[2] She became famous in the international film scene through the film Satin Rouge (2002), by Raja Amari, a film about the self-discovery of a middle aged Tunisian widow with her own desires and sexuality. She also played a similar role in The Syrian Bride, about a caged Druze woman eager to break down all sorts of barriers.
Abbass is also able to speak English fluently as well as French, starring in French films such as "Le sac de farine" and "Le temps de la balle".
In 2008, she played the mother of an illegal Syrian immigrant son in Thomas McCarthy's movie The Visitor, and the mother of an Iraqi soldier in Abbas Fahdel's film Dawn of the World.
Also in 2008, she played the principal role in Israeli director Eran Riklis's film Lemon Tree (Etz Limon in Hebrew), a film about a Palestinian woman's stubborn and quietly heroic battle to defend her lemon orchard, threatened by the arrival of her new neighbor, the Israeli Minister of Defense. For this role, she won Best Performance by an Actress at the 2008 Asia Pacific Screen Awards. In Jim Jarmusch's 2009 film The Limits of Control, in the role of Driver, she recites in Classical Arabic one of the film's leitmotif-phrases, "He who thinks he is bigger than the rest must go to the cemetery. There he will see what life really is."