, the searing documentary from the twice-Oscar-nominated Tunisian filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania, is guaranteed to make you weep—but what makes this inventive, heart-rending drama even more remarkable is that it’s also simultaneously one of the most joyous and life-affirming releases of the last year. It centers on Olfa, a warm, funny, world-weary mother of four, whose life has been upended by tragedy—years earlier, we learn, her two eldest daughters, Rahma and Ghofrane, were radicalized, and left their family behind in Tunisia to join the
Islamic State in Libya. She, along with her two youngest, Eya and Tayssir, are bereft and unable to process this unimaginable loss. From this point onwards, you might think that you can guess what comes next: a series of talking heads—from the family to government officials, reporters and other eyewitnesses—piecing together the story of the two older sisters and setting it in the political context of the Arab Spring and everything that followed. However, the director, ingeniously, swerves this more conventional approach. Instead, she casts two actors, Nour Karoui and Ichraq Matar, to play the absent sisters, and another, Hend Sabry, to embody their mother in scenes that are too painful for the real Olfa to recreate herself. The effect is both thrilling and unsettling, and results in something wonderfully and achingly original: Olfa speaks to us while we see Sabry getting into character and adopting her voice; and when the mother and daughters meet the two young
Women who’ll take the place of Rahma and Ghofrane, they’re both elated and heartbroken. As they teach them about the missing girls they’ll be playing—their passions, their humor, their ever-changing tastes in fashion—they grow close and, eventually, become a kind of makeshift family. We see Eya and Tayssir’s faces light up, and their reverence for their sisters be transplanted onto their new friends–but we also know that a reunion will likely never occur. The camera rarely strays from the domestic sphere—crowded, atmospherically lit rooms; sun-dappled terraces; tilting mirrors that seem to blur the boundaries between truth and reenactment—but the story Olfa tells is sprawling: we begin with her rebellious childhood and turbulent marriage to a man who tormented her and her daughters. (Sabry, alongside Majd Mastoura, who plays all of the male roles in the saga, recreate their traumatic wedding night, which ends, hilariously, with her giving him a bloody nose. The real Olfa directs them, and takes the part of her older sister.) His repeated fearmongering and proclamations that his daughters will grow up to be promiscuous foster a certain paranoia in Olfa. She finally leaves him, but that fear remains, and she watches her daughters like a hawk. Eya and Tayssir—effervescent, emotionally raw, startlingly open—are the real stars of the movie, and they laugh as they recall their mother disciplining them as children, though many of their stories are as harrowing as they are absurd. And that is what’s brilliant about : Olfa is introduced to us as our hero, but it doesn’t take long for us to realize that she’s incredibly prickly, highly volatile, and fundamentally flawed. She certainly had a part to play in what happened to her eldest daughters, and now, that knowledge consumes her. As Sabry asks her why she made certain choices, we see her inner turmoil. Things get worse when Olfa falls for a new lover—one who soon takes advantage of the girls, too. In the film’s most devastating sequence, Eya and Tayssir speak about the abuse they all endured, something their mother refused to believe. Mastoura, this time in the role of their new surrogate father, is there to listen, but becomes overwhelmed and asks to take a break from filming. Eya simply laughs—this isn’t painful for her anymore, she says, just cathartic. In the end he’s arrested, but their troubles continue: When Olfa goes away briefly to work in Libya, Rahma and Ghofrane have a goth phase and begin dating boys; when she finds out, she beats them. Then, a new brand of religious fundamentalism takes hold in Tunisia. Soon, Rahma and Ghofrane begin wearing niqabs, start repeating dangerous rhetoric, and, one after the other, run away from home. The hole they leave behind is immense. Olfa fights, in vain, to retrieve them, and in the film’s final few minutes, we see the real Rahma and Ghofrane, imprisoned in Libya in 2021. It’s truly agonizing stuff, but it’s also profoundly moving—for Eya and Tayssir, mulling over the details of their childhood, discussing it with their mother, and offering it up for the world to see has, it seems, been strangely healing. It’s allowed them to make peace with what happened, to the extent that that’s possible, and to forgive their mother and their older sisters. Speaking directly to the latter, Eya says, through tears, “This family that has destroyed you, I won’t let it destroy me.” She and Tayssir understand the intergenerational trauma—the pain passed down from their grandmother to their mother and to them—that led to this point, but they also choose to break the cycle. They hold on to their unbridled capacity for joy, which permeates the film, visible in their propensity for collapsing into giggles, teasing their mother, playing dress up, and running wild with their newly acquired substitute sisters. Their resilience is unfathomable—and enough to restore your faith in humanity. It’s what makes essential viewing, particularly in the era of divisive culture wars where figures like are largely written off as one-dimensional villains. But where do these young women come from? What have they suffered at the hands of others? And what made them so susceptible to radicalization? This film doesn’t seek to absolve them, but it prompts you to look more closely and ask more questions. After you watch it, you won’t be able to see the world in quite the same way ever again. Four Daughters