'Four Daughters', a docu-drama on love, sisterhood, and Jihad

Shortlisted by the Oscar Academy to represent Tunisia, “Four Daughters” or “Olfa’s Girls” by esteemed director Kaouther Ben Hania tells the tragic tale of four sisters and their mother, as two disappear to join Daesh while the other two mourn their absence.

The film, 1 hour and 47 minutes long, starts on a calm note showing Tunisian actress Hind Sabri playing Olfa, the mother, then shortly turns dark and twisted as the story gets more realistic.

The story of Rhofrane, Rahma, Eya, and Tayssir is about growing up in a strict household and chasing liberty in questionable routes.

Through this production, Kouather Ben Hania delivered an intricate film where the line between fiction and documentary disappears as even the fictional scenes are nothing but reproductions of what Olfa’s family went through.

To tell the story of the lost sisters, Ben Hania brought in professional actresses with an uncanny resemblance to play them before they left Tunisia for Libya to pursue a path of Jihad and join ISIS, as the eldest, Ghofrane, married an ISIS prince.

Events unravel as the younger sisters, Eya and Tayssir Chikhaoui, debunk their darkest of childhood traumas, especially the events of their sisters’ way of following an extremely religious lifestyle and judging everyone who disagrees to follow the same path.

While at first, the movie retraces the four daughters’ childhood, their abusive father, and an emotionally absent mother who guilt-tripped them for simply being pre-teen and teenage girls, by the end of the first half the movie moves to how the oldest two got recruited to join Daesh and “the path of god” in honor of “the Islamic state.”

Cinematography-wise, the film, dealing with very dark subject matter, conveys the family’s depression through a somber atmosphere, wide shots with small subjects, and dimmed lights.

The actors as well as Olfa’s family all got confused several times, torn between whether some scenes should even be shot and reenacted and between keeping some things unsaid.

The slow-paced beginning heavily contradicts the fast-paced ending features real footage from TV shows showing the oldest siblings’ arrest, Olfa discussing their story on Tunisian national TV, and a Pentagon spokesperson announcing the arrest of the oldest girl’ husband who bombarded an area in Libya.

As the film came close to its end, Kaouther Ben Hania showed footage of the two girls in a Libyan prison, with a new character, the oldest girl’s daughter.

The youngest two, who speak most of the duration of the film, heavily impacted by what their sisters did, called for their sisters’ repatriation, while the mother didn’t voice her wish to see her daughters again, seemingly not willing to forgive nor talk to them.

Olfa’s family’s dark history, reenacted with the help of her, her daughters, and professional actors, notably the iconic Hind Sabri, shows how love, persists despite heartbreak and tragedy.

The film was very well received by critics and is now on the Oscar run for Best Foreign Film.