Four Daughters, a surreal blend of documentary, memory, meta-fictional re-enactment and therapy now shortlisted for an Oscar, originated years ago: in 2016, when a Tunisian woman named Olfa Hamrouni took to local news to call out her country’s failure to combat the scourge of Isis. And the year before that, when her two radicalized eldest daughters, Ghofrane and Rahma Chikhaoui, fled to join the group in Libya. And the years before that, when Hamrouni struggled to raise her four daughters – the two eldest, rebellious and fiery; the two youngest, keen sponges of conflict – with an iron fist and a housekeeper’s salary.
Hamrouni first caught the eye of Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania on the news, pleading with authorities to repatriate her daughters from a Libyan prison in which they’ve been detained on suspicion of terrorist activities (and after a US anti-terror strike killed Rahma’s husband in 2016). Ben Hania was impressed by “her ability to tell her story”, she said. Hamrouni and her two younger daughters, Eya and Tayssir, “have the right words to describe their feelings, their story, their evolution of events”.
