Description
Olfa from Tunisia had four daughters. The family history was made up of love and violence, of teenage rebellion and maternal control. A bigger history was unfolding around them: the country was engulfed by revolution and religious fundamentalism. Kaouther Ben Hania narrates the family’s story through a combination of interviews and dramatizations. In place of the eldest daughters, there are actresses, as Gofran and Rahma disappeared years ago, leaving a void that the characters bravely explore. The filmmaker guides the protagonists through the family’s biography, attempting to understand the missing daughters by reconstructing the past.
- The film won the Golden Eye – the Documentary Prize at Cannes 2023, was nominated for an Academy Award, and garnered over 20 prizes and awards worldwide.
About the director:
Kaouther Ben Hania
Director, screenwriter. She studied filmmaking in Tunis and in Paris (La Fémis and the Sorbonne). She directed several short films, including Wooden Hand (2013) and Sheik’s Watermelons (2018), which were selected for several international film festivals, and received numerous awards. The Challat of Tunis, her first feature-length film, opened the ACID section at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival and achieved international success on both the festival circuit and cinema screens, where it would be distributed in more than 15 countries. Then, she made Zaineb Hates the Snow, a full-length documentary which premiered in 2016 as part of the official selection at the 2016 Locarno Film Festival. Her fiction film Beauty and the Dogs was selected at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival in the “Un Certain Regard” section where it won the award for Best Sound Creation, and subsequently embarked on a prestigious international trajectory. Her last film The Man Who Sold His Skin, was officially selected to premiere at the Venice Film Festival and was nominated at the 2021 Oscars in the Best International Feature Film category.