When Hiam Abbass first read the script for Reed Van Dyk’s debut Atonement, based on a 2012 New Yorker article, it moved her to tears. 

“I wasn’t familiar with the article at all, but when I read the script, I started crying while reading it,” Abbass tells Deadline. “And when I get such a big emotion from reading a script, I know that it’s necessary to go into the story and make it happen.”

The film, which plays in Directors’ Fortnight in Cannes this evening (May 15), is set in the early days of the Iraq war, when a U.S. Marine’s split-second decision during a firefight devastates an Iraqi family. Years later, aided by a New Yorker journalist, he seeks to reconcile with the woman and her family who survived. Abbass stars as Mariam, an Iraqi mother who loses her two sons and husband in the firefight while Boyd Holbrook plays U.S. Marine Lou and Kenneth Branagh stars as New Yorker journalist Michael. 

Van Dyk writes and directs the project, which is being sold in Cannes by CAA Media Finance, WME and The Veterans, and Abbass admits she was drawn to the “character-driven” nature of the film and its exploration of trauma and people afflicted by the casualties of war. 

“What really intrigued me about this character was the two sides to her,” she says. “On the one hand, there was forgiveness and on the other, in order to her sons rest in peace, she gives life to Lou who has suddenly come to seek her forgiveness for killing most of her family.” 

When prepping for the role, Abbass says that she wasn’t in contact with the real family on which the original article is based and instead focused on Van Dyk’s script. 

“What was important for me is not the truth of the true story as much as the truth of the script and the story that Reed wanted to tell,” she says. “I built on my knowledge of wars and conflicts in the Middle East after that. Americans, Arabs, French, Europeans – all of us have lived with moments of that war and we know exactly what happened, so it’s really vivid still in our memories for people my age.” 

She continues: “My only preoccupation when I read stories that I know are partially or fully true is to render to the character that I’m playing her own truth in order to make her exist forever. Whatever happens to this family or to this woman, for me, is a universal example of the pain of a mother and the pain of a woman in an unjust situation. I wanted her to be an example to a lot of people to think about how painful it is for a mother to live what she went through.”

Abbass, whose credits include Succession and The Syrian Bride, is Palestinian and when pressed about whether her heritage and her own traumas of war played a part in preparing for the role of Miriam, she said simply, “I have no idea” and added that life experiences are simply “great food for the characters we create.” 

“I think I was really generous with her because I loved her and I thought her combat is so important that I want her to take whatever she needs,” says Abbass. “She stood for herself and she took whatever she took for me to exist as a person, as a character. But I never really compare a war to another or an experience to another or a pain to another.”

Abbass continues: “What interests me the most, is to create these moments so that people don’t forget about each other and so that they don’t forget about the pain of one another. The war in Iraq had its own components, its own characteristics, its own conditions. The war on Palestine is another condition, and you cannot compare them. But the pain and the injustice of civilians that become victims of war – whether it’s the Palestinians, Sudanese Africans or Iraqis in our case – the pain is the same. And that pain should really be the thing that should be shared with humanity in order for us to maybe learn not to repeat our mistakes.”