Bye Bye Tiberias

Arab Film Fest Tulsa presents
a Palestinian & Sudan Double Feature + Talk & Meal
and returns in full 2025!

3pm: Bye Bye Tiberias
4:45pm: Meal from Shawkat Mediterrean Grill
5:30pm: Goodbye Julia + post-film talk with special guests

$15 for entire program

Bye Bye Tiberius
Palestinian Family Documentary - 1h22min - Not Rated - dir. Lina Soualem - Arabic and French with English subtitles
Years after leaving her Palestinian village to pursue an acting career in France, "Succession" and "Ramy" hit series star Hiam Abbass returns home with her daughter, in this intimate documentary about four generations of women and their shared legacy of separation.

Goodbye Julia
Sudanese Drama - 2h - Not Rated - dir. Mohamed Kordofani - Arabic with English subtitles
Wracked by guilt after covering up a murder, Mona - a northern Sudanese retired singer in a tense marriage - tries to make amends by taking in the deceased's southern Sudanese widow, Julia, and her son, Daniel, into her home. Unable to confess her transgressions to Julia, Mona decides to leave the past behind and adjust to a new status quo, unaware that the country's turmoil may find its way into her home and put her face to face with her sins.

Stay after Goodbye Julia for a half hour discussion with three special guests about intersections with the film in the work of three special guests--Nathan Hughes from the Tulsa refugee resettlement organization Rising Village, Tulsa Artist Fellow and community-based Ethiopian photographer Eyakem Gulilat, and virtually from Austin, Sudanese-British filmmaker Fatima Wardy, a colleague of the film's director, Mohamed Kordofani.

Curated by Mizna, hosted by Circle Cinema, sponsored by Tulsa Artist Fellowship

About the special guests
Nathan Hughes
Nathan Hughes is the Resource Coordinator at Rising Village, a Refugee Resettlement Agency based in Tulsa, OK. Their mission is to help marginalized people become full community participants and contributors through various programs and initiatives. In this role, Nathan manages housing, donations, and PR. Having worked in marketing before this Nathan uses his background in marketing and design to help the refugee and immigrant community in Tulsa. Outside of work, he can be found bike touring in different parts of the world or fishing ponds back in his home state of Kansas.

Eyakem Gulilat
Originally from Ethiopia, Eyakem Gulilat’s work is rooted in the search for belonging. Through photography, he navigates the complexities of cross-cultural interactions, exploring how time, memory, and place shape our experiences. His work has been honored with awards including a National Endowment for the Arts grant in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Council of Tulsa, the National Photography Fellowship at the Midwest Center for Photography, the En Foco Photography Fellowship, and the Project Row Houses and University of Houston Fellowship. His work has been widely exhibited across the U.S. and Canada and is held in notable public and private collections. Gulilat is currently a Tulsa Artist Fellow.

Fatima Wardy
Fatima Wardy is a Sudanese and British filmmaker based in Austin, Texas. In 2023 she was awarded a development grant by the Arab Fund for Arts and Culture (AFAC) for her documentary feature titled The Love Marriage––an archive-based film that utilizes the filmmaker’s personal photographs and family oral histories to explore the modernisation of Sudan in the 1980s and the genesis of the Omar al-Bashir dictatorship. Currently, she is an MFA Candidate in Film and Media Production at the University of Texas at Austin, where her studies have been supported by a Fulbright Award and a Pigott/BAFTA Scholarship.