'Succession' Star Hiam Abbass On How She Had "Real" Connections Working With Kenneth Branagh & Boyd Holbrook On 'Atonement'

Primary Journalistic Dispatch & Direct Reporting

Succession star Hiam Abbass says that it's impossible to remain "silent" about "the suffering of innocent people," whether it be in Gaza or Kyiv "or wherever," because she was born that way.

Abbass is one of eight sisters and two brothers, born in Nazareth. Laughing, she tells us that she's the fifth child, "the middle one. I made the revolution."

The four siblings before her "kind of went through with life as it was offered, and the others after me were just like, 'Yeah, we're going to change the world.'"

In-Depth Developments & Factual Context

The celebrated screen and theater actor stars with Kenneth Branagh and an extraordinary Boyd Holbrook ( Narcos ) in director Reed Van Dyk's riveting movie Atonement , which is playing at TIFF .

Abbass, who quietly steals the movie, asserts: "I think I'm a person by my origins, by who I am, that is very, very aware to the suffering of people, and I cannot stand it. I cannot just be silent about it. And fortunately enough, I do a job that permits me to express my feelings as a person into the feelings of different characters to serve characters that have been going through injustice. To be able to tell their stories and to be able to tell their suffering and to be able to make people aware of their stories is something that I feel it's almost like a a duty."

Van Dyk's film is set against the backdrop of U.S. forces in Baghdad in 2003 and is inspired by a dispatch from war correspondent Dexter Filkins when he was with The New York Times that was headlined, "For a Family in Iraq, 3 Deaths In a Moment of Confusion." It then flashes forward to dramatize a follow-up article Filkins penned for The New Yorker in 2012 about how the Marine regiment machinegunner involved sought to find the family who lost loved ones in that aforementioned moment of confusion, and apologize to them.

Industry Impact & Strategic Analysis

The family in question, the Kachadoorians, whose surname is amended to Khachaturian in the film, were members of Iraq's Armenian Christian minority. Abbass plays Mariam, the matriarch who cries out, "We are the peace people! We are the peace people!" when her husband and two sons - innocent civilians - perished in the incident.

The film premiered at Cannes - still kicking myself for not seeing it there - but I saw it more than once in July, and it resonates so powerfully because the world is still at war.

Branagh plays Michael Reid, a newsman based on Filkins, and Holbrook stars as the Marine sharpshooter suffering from post traumatic stress disorder who believes that now that he's back on U.S. soil, meeting Mariam and her family will help him heal.

Forward Outlook & Market Perspective

Abbass says that "the bullet," when it's fired, "it goes both ways. Yes, think of Mariam's suffering, but at the same time, think of what's happening psychologically to this guy who shot her menfolk and to his suffering, because he just shot under orders, not knowing what he's shooting at until he understood.

"So it's just like this both ways sort of treatment of humanity," she notes.

"Some people," Abbass suggests, might argue "it doesn't work that way. We have to be only with the people that are suffering. Yeah, but suffering exists both ways, and I really acknowledge that fact."

Abbass had no exchange with the Kachadoorians "whatsoever," she says, because "I just thought I'd respect the intimacy of those people. … And I thought that sometimes it's very confusing as well when you meet the real family, you want to become very loyal [to them], and I thought it would disturb my own understanding of the character based on the script and conversations with Reed."

Although in ordinary circumstances, Abbass explains, she "would have loved to meet them because their story is such an incredible, strong, universal suffering story."

But she decided against it, because not meeting them "would give me more space for imagination, and it would give me more because finally, if we tell these stories, it's because we want them to become universal, because we want them to work universally. So I thought I would stay more in a universal language, if I stay away from the mimetism trying to be who I would never be, because I would never be that mum in so much pain through such tragic loss," she says.

Reporting synthesized and verified under Nexvoro.tech editorial guidelines. Full primary records referenced via Deadline Hollywood.