Name |
Hiam Abbass |
Height |
|
Naionality |
Israelian |
Date of Birth |
November 30, 1960 |
Place of Birth |
Nazareth, Israel |
Famous for |
|
Hiam Abbass (Arabic: هيام عباس; born November 30, 1960), also known as Hiam Abbas or Hiyam Abbas, is a Palestinian actress. She is known for her roles in the films Satin Rouge, Haifa (1996), Paradise Now (2005), The Syrian Bride (2004), Free Zone (2005), and The Visitor (2008) and Amreeka. 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. Additionally, she directed two short films, Le Pain (2001), La Danse éternelle (2004).
She is the lead actress in Julian Schnabel's Miral.
Abbass was born in Nazareth, Israel and was raised in a traditional Muslim Palestinian village by the Lebanese border.[1] 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 out all sorts of barriers, performing a perfectly delivered and subtle performance with an inner struggle, which confronted today's religious and social dogmas and restrains.
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' film The 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.