Four Daugh­ters review – suc­cess­ful­ly bypass­es the traps of the gratuitous

Doc­u­men­taries are just as much about the care­ful with­hold­ing and stag­ger­ing of infor­ma­tion as they are about shar­ing said infor­ma­tion itself. This dichoto­my stands as a rea­son to make one ret­i­cent to share in a first para­graph the life-shat­ter­ing cir­cum­stances that turned the women of the Ham­rouni fam­i­ly into the sub­ject of the newest doc­u­men­tary by Tunisian direc­tor Kaouther Ben Hania, Four Daughters.

The incit­ing episode of Ben Hania’s fol­low-up to Oscar-nom­i­nat­ed The Man Who Sold His Skin is at first blamed on a wolf. Olfa Harou­mi, the moth­er of the tit­u­lar daugh­ters, describes the dis­ap­pear­ance of her two eldest as a mod­ern Red Rid­ing Hood, her lov­ing nest vio­lent­ly invad­ed and destroyed by a prey­ing fig­ure. As Four Daugh­ters unrav­els, the wolf shapeshifts, guilt ping-ponged around those involved in a sly­ly craft­ed exam­i­na­tion of perspective.

Ben Hania places her lat­est in the murky patch between fact and fic­tion, with Olfa and her two youngest joined by actors to reen­act key moments of their family’s sto­ry. The only excep­tion is the moth­er, played by both Olfa her­self and famed Egypt­ian actress Hend Sabri. This choice, jus­ti­fied with­in the film as a means to pro­tect the moth­er from emo­tion­al­ly-charged sequences, proves a fruit­ful start­ing point for inves­ti­gat­ing the way in which Four Daugh­ters enquires at how much truth can change when prod­ded and bent to feed into a well-estab­lished narrative.

Olfa is a charm­ing fig­ure. And, most impor­tant­ly, a fig­ure con­cerned with and aware of the ben­e­fits of charm­ing oth­ers. The mother’s under­stand­ing of her abil­i­ty to per­suade those around her is nev­er more pro­nounced than when in con­ver­sa­tion with Eya and Tas­sir, her two youngest girls. This makes for Ben Hania’s choice to remove Olfa from some of the film’s most sen­si­tive reen­act­ments an assured feat, with Sabri step­ping in to allow the girls the space to express their grief and dis­sect the thornier aspects of a child­hood Olfa is stead­fast in fram­ing through rose-tint­ed glasses.

Eya and Tassir’s will­ing­ness to tell their sto­ry — and the open­ness and clar­i­ty with which they do — at once mud­dles and relieves the eth­i­cal ques­tion­ings sur­round­ing Four Daugh­ters. As we have now reached para­graph five, it feels a fit­ting time to bid farewell to ret­i­cence and reveal the tragedy that struck the female clan: in 2012, then teens Rhama and Ghofrane became inter­est­ed in a group spread­ing reli­gious pro­pa­gan­da in their impov­er­ished neigh­bour­hood. It didn’t take long for the girls, raised Mus­lims but not hijab-wear­ing, to not only adopt the full burqa but con­vince their sis­ters to do the same. Months lat­er, the duo left Tunisia to join ISIS in Lybia.

There are moments in Four Daugh­ters that veer dan­ger­ous­ly close to voyeurism. The remain­ing girls are made to con­front the trau­ma that has for­ev­er changed the course of their lives in not only painful detail but also in haunt­ing phys­i­cal form, with Ben Hania cast­ing two Rah­ma and Ghofrane looka­likes to stand as ghost­ly reminders of all the fam­i­ly lost. Alas, by gam­bling with the flim­sy dice of moral­i­ty, the direc­tor crafts a film that suc­cess­ful­ly bypass­es the traps of the gra­tu­itous to find its way towards an uncom­fort­able but ulti­mate­ly reward­ing catharsis.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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