Four Daughters

For a film to receive nominations for both the Oscars and the Palme d’Or is unusual; for a documentary, it is even more so, which is testament to the power and craft of Kaouther Ben Hania’s Four Daughters. Ostensibly the story of a family of Tunisian women, mother Olfa and her titular daughters, Eya and Tayssir, the younger, and Rahma and Ghofrane, the elder, who leave to join the fighters of Islamic State in Libya, the film is an attempt to examine what might have happened to radicalise these two daughters. However, in their absence, the director has cast actors to play them and their parents even as Eya and Tayssir appear as themselves, as does Olfa, regularly commenting on the film’s portrayal of events. Inventive and sinuous, the film finds genuine, deeply felt emotion through its use of artifice.