There is real emotional warmth and human sympathy in this otherwise somewhat flawed film, a docudrama experiment in getting actors to play some of the real people in a tragic news story from Tunisia. Olfa Hamrouni, a divorced woman from the coastal town of Sousse, made the headlines seven years ago when two of her four daughters, Rahma and Ghofrane, broke her and their sisters’ hearts by vanishing from the country to become fighters and wives for Islamic State in Syria. Now director Kaouther Ben Hania re-enacts key parts of Olfa’s family life, featuring the remaining sisters Eya and Tayssir playing themselves, but performers playing the vanished fugitives: Ichraq Matar is Ghofrane and Nour Karoui is Rahma.
Despite the fact that she hasn’t vanished, and is in fact a vivid and formidable onscreen figure, Olfa is also played by an actor, Hend Sabri, so the procedure is already in fact slightly muddled, though no less intriguing. The performers and real figures are interviewed together, and then scenes are played out, with Olfa coming on to say where they’re going wrong. The actor Majd Mastoura plays Olfa’s distant and abusive father, and the film shows how weirdly upset he becomes to embody a vicious character from the real world.
