Four Daughters (2023)
Director: Kaouther Ben Hania Run Time: 107 min. Release Year: 2023
Starring: Hend Sabry, Ichraq Matar, Majd Mastoura, Nour Karoui, Olfa Hamrouni
Country: France, Tunisia, Germany, Saudi Arabia
Language: Arabic with English subtitles
About the film:
Best Documentary winner at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival and selected as the official Tunisian entry for Best International Feature at the 96th Academy Awards.
This riveting exploration of rebellion, memory, and sisterhood reconstructs the story of Olfa Hamrouni and her four daughters, unpacking a complex family history through intimate interviews and artful reenactments to examine how the Tunisian woman’s two eldest were radicalized by Islamic extremists.
“More than anything, Four Daughters is radical in its honesty and courage”
—Lovia Gyarkye, The Hollywood Reporter
Casting professional actresses as the missing daughters, along with acclaimed Egyptian-Tunisian actress Hend Sabri as Olfa, award-winning director Kaouther Ben Hania restages pivotal moments in the family’s life. These scenes are interwoven with confessions and reflections from Olfa and her younger daughters, offering the women agency to tell their own story and capturing moments of joy, loss, violence, and heartache.
Winner of four prizes including L’Oeil d’Or (Best Documentary) when it screened in competition at the Cannes Film Festival, Four Daughters (2023) is a compelling portrait of five women and a unique and ambitious work of nonfiction cinema that explores the nature of memory, the weight of inherited trauma, and the ties that bind mothers and daughters.
About the filmmaker:
Kaouther Ben Hania is a Tunisian director and writer who studied cinema at the Ecole des Arts et du Cinéma in Tunisia and in Paris at La Fémis and the Sorbonne. She directed her first short film, La Brèche in 2004 followed by Me, My Sister and the Thing (2006), Wooden Hand (2013), and Sheikh’s Watermelons (2018). In 2014, she directed her first feature film, The Blade of Tunis. She has directed many award winning films, including Beauty and the Dogs (2017), which was the Un Certain Regard winner at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival. Her 2020 feature The Man Who Sold His Skin, screened at the Venice Film Festival, where it ran in the Orizzonti section and received the award for Best Actor, and was nominated for Best International Feature at the 2021 Academy Awards.
Her most recent film, Four Daughters (2023) won Best Documentary at the Cannes Film Festival and was selected as the Tunisian entry for the Best International Feature Film at the 96th Academy Awards.
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