The directorial debut of journalist-turned-filmmaker Dina Amer, You Resemble Me does not give us a clue about the kind of film it would morph into, when it begins from two young, inseparable sisters.
The girls are evidently not having the best days of their childhood, with an uncaring mother who seems hell-bent on snatching away even the smallest of joys they can afford. But the two sisters stick together, with Hasna, the elder one, ensuring that her younger sibling Mariam does not go hungry or without a gift on her birthday.
However, Dina’s intent in the powerful initial parts of the film, screened in the International Competition category at the ongoing 26th International Film Festival of Kerala (IFFK), is to show us the early life of someone who would come to be identified as Hasna Ait Boulahcen, known as Europe’s first female bomber.
As a journalist, Dina is trying to correct inaccuracies in the quick reporting that followed the November 2015 bombings in Paris. Though Islamic State-inspired terrorists were indeed behind the bombing, it later emerged that Hasna was not the suicide bomber as she can be heard in a video clip requesting help to leave the apartment where she was caught in with her radicalised lover, the actual bomber.
Even with this intent, Dina does not shy away from showing the disturbing transformation in Hasna’s character. After getting thrown out by her mother, Hasna and her sister roam the streets before social workers take them in and send them to different foster homes. This decision breaks Hasna, who cannot stay away from her sister.
From this point, the film jumps several years to show a Hasna who deals in drugs and works in kebab shops. She is still trying hard to reach her sister who is not keen to meet her, which makes it clear that Hasna has become someone whom even her closest one does not really want to be with. With no place to go and faced with various kinds of harassment, she is at her lowest ebb, and interacting online with a cousin who has become an Islamist radical.
When we see these interactions and the resultant transformation in her thoughts, the claims initially made by the media about her would seem plausible. But she seems to be in it more for her love for the man, her cousin, although she does make some radical comments at various points.
Dina’s approach is that of a filmmaker in the initial parts, while the keen eye of a journalist looking for nuances takes over in the latter portions. This mixed approach, which has more to do with the filmmaker’s background, works well in drawing an intriguing portrait of Hasna.
