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Four Daughters (Les Filles d'Olfa) director Kaouther Ben Hania on Olfa Hamrouni, Eya Chikhaoui, Tayssir Chikhaoui, Ichrak Matar, Nour Karoui, and Hind Sabri: “I already have a rich gallery of female characters. So to simplify and have the focus on the female characters, I thought that the men can be played by one actor (Majd Mastoura) and I wanted to experiment with this idea.”

In the second instalment with Kaouther Ben Hania on Tunisia’s now Best International Feature Film and Documentary Oscar shortlisted Four Daughters (Les Filles d'Olfa) we discussed her three natural-born storytellers (Olfa Hamrouni and her daughters Eya Chikhaoui and Tayssir Chikhaoui), experimenting with one actor (Majd Mastoura) portraying multiple male characters, loving clichés, and colours. Ben Hania’s The Man Who Sold His Skin had received a Best International Film Oscar nomination in 2021 and her intense and unwavering Beauty And The Dogs (Aala Kaf Ifrit...

Kaouther Ben Hania on Tunisia’s Oscar submission Four Daughters (Les Filles d'Olfa): “It’s a movie about real people but it’s also a reality that doesn’t exist outside this movie.”

Kaouther Ben Hania in Four Daughters tells the story of Olfa Hamrouni and her four daughters. Eya Chikhaoui and Tayssir Chikhaoui, the two youngest, are with their mother, while the two oldest Ghofrane Chikaoui and Rahma Chikhaoui are imprisoned in Libya for terrorism charges. In the film they are portrayed by actors Ichrak Matar and Nour Karoui respectively, and the mother finds herself doubled as well, by actress Hind Sabri, for scenes that, as the director explains in the hybrid documentary, might be too upsetting for Olfa to relive. Ben Hania’s The Man Who Sold His Skin had received a Best International Film Oscar nomination in 2021 and her intense and unwavering Beauty And The Dogs.

Two films by Arab women directors are sharing the L’Oeil d’or (Golden Eye) prize for the best documentary in Cannes. Four Daughters (Les Filles d’Olfa) by Tunisian filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania and The Mother of All Lies (La Mère de tous les mensonges) by Moroccan filmmaker Asmae El Moudir were announced as the winners at a joint ceremony this morning at the Palais in Cannes.

“It’s huge,” Ben Hania told Deadline after the announcement. “I’m very happy and I’m also very happy to share this prize with Asmae from Morocco. And I think that it means something for the region, for the storytellers, for us women directors… It’s so special.”

Both Ben Hania and El Moudir were on hand for the presentation at the Salon des Ambassadeurs. It the second prize in two days for El Moudir. On Thursday, she won best director in...

Cannes: Docudramas are inherently difficult to master. You’re attempting to meld real-life footage or people with actors and, often, fictionalized accounts that may substantially differ from the truth. In the case of “Four Daughters,” director and screenwriter Kaouther Ben Hania has succeeded in mastering the genre but, notably, by the slimmest of margins. It helps that her subject and source material are compelling enough to overcome the movie’s flaws.

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The follow-up to Ben Hania’s Oscar-nominated 2020 narrative film, “The Man Who Sold His Skin,” her latest endeavor begins with Olfa Hamrouni and her two twentysomething daughters, Eya Chikahoui and Tayssir Chikhaoui, waiting in a production office or maybe a makeup studio or, possibly, just a room (it’s never really clarified) somewhere in Tunis, Tunisia.

Continue reading ‘Four Daughters’ Cannes Review: A...