There’s a scene in Kaouther Ben Hania’s Oscar-nominated documentary Four Daughters where four young women sit together in a heap on a bed. They lean against one another, singing songs about love, while one paints the other’s toenails and another plays with someone else’s hair. They reminisce about growing up - about developing breasts and getting their periods. They joke and laugh, their dark eyes lighting up, their smiles infectious. It’s a depiction of sisterhood; of the joy, connection, and silliness that comes with that unbreakable bond.
It's a thread that weaves through the film. But only two of those women, Eya and Tayssir, are real sisters, the other two are actors playing their older sisters. The real Ghofrane and Rahma are languishing in a Libyan prison - jailed for 16 years for running away to join Islamic State in 2015. When Eya and Tayssir meet the two actors it’s like they are old friends - they recognise their sisters in them. ‘She has the same smile as Ghofrane,’ exclaims Tayssir, excitedly. For a moment they are all together again.
As the Oscars approach, make sure to add Ben Hania’s innovative meta documentary to your watchlist alongside this award season's buzziest blockbusters, Oppenheimer and Barbie. The powerful film, which has been nominated in the Best Documentary Feature Film category at the 96th Academy Awards, tells the true story of a Tunisian family torn apart after the two eldest daughters become radicalised by Islamic extremists. It won the L'Œil d'or award for Best Documentary after debuting at the Cannes Film Festival in 2023 and was selected as the Tunisian entry for the Best International Feature Film at this year’s Academy Awards, alongside its eventual nomination. Released in the UK on March 1, it is like a modern Little Women with a dark underbelly - one that cuts deep and leaves you reeling.
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The film slips between documentary and drama; they recreate memories, piecing together scenes from their lives, speak about their feelings, and try to understand what led the women to be sucked into the infamous terrorist group. The director, Ben Hania, gives them the power to tell their own story - at times it feels as if they are the ones directing. It feels cathartic, but also resurfaces painful memories which they have to grapple with. Ben Hania says she made sure the family had done therapy to process the trauma of what happened before even putting them in front of the camera. She describes humour as being their ‘secret weapon’, even when speaking about difficult memories, a quip would not be far from their lips, adding that it became their ‘coping mechanism’.
‘For them, talking is a form of liberation,’ she says. ‘It was very important that they had a voice, because you can see in the movie, they are natural born storytellers.’ The brutal honesty of the younger daughters is refreshing, and being able to speak about their feelings with their mum has ‘made their relationship stronger today.’
Olfa Hamrouni, the mother, is a bold, complex woman, who had a difficult upbringing and an abusive husband, but also often beats her daughters. She is intermittently portrayed by the acclaimed Tunisian-Egyptian actor Hend Sabri who Ben Hania describes as Olfa’s ‘mirror’, which she wanted in order to see ‘how a person can behave like this and can have regret and shame and guilt.’
Olfa had already begun speaking to the media in Tunisia about her daughters when Ben Hania approached her. ‘But she was severely attacked on social media, so, she told me, “I'm done with journalists.” I told her, “Okay, I'm not a journalist.” So, she was willing to tell her story, but she wanted someone who will not judge her.’
The daughters’ radicalisation started as a form of teenage rebellion against their mother’s strict parenting. The older two became goths, dying their hair and circling their eyes with kohl, and then they turned to religion, speaking to local sheikhs and watching videos on Facebook. Soon Ghofrane began to wear a hijab and then her younger sisters copied her. Rahma would whip them if they were late to pray.
After Ghofrane and Rahma go to Libya to join Islamic State aged 15 and 16, Eya and Tayssir, then 10 and 12, go to a juvenile centre as their mother worries they will also try to leave. Tayssir, in particular, wanted to join her sisters. ‘Imagine if we hadn’t gone to the centre,’ she says to Eya at one point. ‘This film would be about all of us disappearing.’
At the film’s heart is an exploration of how patriarchy has shaped the women’s lives and how they battle to overcome it. It is about their strength, determination, and the power of sisterhood; they are defiant and dedicated to each other despite everything they’ve been through. ‘The notion of sisterhood was at the centre of [the film], and radiated everywhere,’ says Ben Hania - from the crew, which was almost all women, to the real four daughters and the ‘cinema sisters,’ who ‘quickly, magically, became like real sisters for the two youngest daughters.’
Still, the absent sisters have left a gaping hole in their lives. Their disappearance affecting the younger sisters in different ways.
Eya is angry with her older sisters and vows to break the cycle of violence that they’ve been born into. ‘I want to say to [Ghofrane and Rahma], “this family that has destroyed you. I won’t let it destroy me.”’ The youngest sister, Tayssir, who was particularly close to Rahma, says she wasn’t just her sister: ‘She was my whole world.’ When asked what she would say to her now, tears fall down her cheeks as she replies: ‘I would like to tell her, “I love you so much. I will never forget you.”’
Four Daughters by Kaouther Ben Hania is being released by Modern Films in UK and Irish cinemas on March 1 2024.
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