Hiam Abbass is set to receive the European Film Academy’s honorary award for European Achievement in World Cinema.
Abbass will be handed the award at the 39th European Film Awards on 16 January 2027 in Athens. She will be the ceremony’s honorary guest.
Abbass was born in Nazareth, the child of a Palestinian family that was forced into exile in 1948. She began her acting career at the Palestinian National Theatre El-Hakawati in East Jerusalem, which was often closed by the Israeli authorities. During a theatre tour through Europe, she decided to leave Palestine for London and has been living in Paris since the late 1980s.
Abbass played her first lead role in 1989 in La nuit miraculeuse directed by Ariane Mnouchkine. She has since acted in over 100 films, including Satin Rouge by Raja Amari, Paradise Now by Hany Abu-Assad, The Visitor by Tom McCarthy, and Denis Villeneuve’s Blade Runner 2049.
Abbass has been nominated twice for European Film Awards, in both cases for her performance in films directed by Eran Riklis: She was nominated for the People’s Choice Award 2005 for Syrian Bride and for European Actress 2008 for Lemon Tree, which won her an Asia Pacific Screen Award.
Her daughter Lina Soualem’s documentary Bye Bye Tiberias, which returns to her home village Deir Hanna and explores her bold choices and her bond to her family, was also nominated for the European Film Awards 2024. Alongside her work as an actress, Hiam Abbass also directs. Her film Inheritance was screened at Gijón, São Paulo, and Venice Days (2012).