This docu-drama is somewhat unexpected and largely fascinating although perhaps it does go on a little in the last part.
Olfa Hammouni is the mother at the centre of this Tunisian story. She is basically a solo mother as her husband did little more than provide her with four daughters. At one point after the 2011 revolution, her eldest two become Islamic fanatics and end up leaving the country for Libya where Ghofrane marries the leader of an IS cell. Later they are caught when the US bombs the cell’s headquarters and are imprisoned. Ghofrane has a daughter by now and she and her sister Rahma bring her up while serving their 16 year sentences.
Meanwhile Olfa blames Tunisian authorities for not doing enough to keep the young women in Tunisia or for not repatriating them. In a way, this documentary is a means of telling her story and continuing the pressure on the government.
Director Kaouther Ben Hania goes for an unusual approach. She tells the story using two actresses to stand in for the absent daughters and recreates scenes using them, the two younger sisters who remain and the mother. However, she also brings in a substitute for the mother (for the difficult scenes) in the form of famous Tunisian actress Hind Sabri. One actor, Majd Mastoura, a top local star plays all the men: the husband, Wissem, a lover Olfa takes after her divorce, and a policeman Olfa sees for help in keeping her daughters in the country. The real Olfa and Eya and Tayssir fill the actors in on details of how to play scenes and what happened in the family.
It makes for quite compelling viewing almost like a prolonged therapy session in which family secrets and social norms and times converge to create the circumstances that lead to the older girls leaving. Why precisely they went to far as to join the Islamic State is never clearly established but there is little doubt that with a mother like Olfa, escape is understandable. She is an amazing character. At times she seems charming, hard-working and sympathetic but we also discover that she had some very hard beliefs and beat her daughters and that she did not do anything to stop Wissem, her lover, from taking advantage of the girls.
Interestingly, the younger daughters seem reasonably balanced and admit that they have undergone a lot of therapy to deal with the past. As Hind Sabri substitutes for mother in some scenes questions are asked that perhaps never surfaced before as to how much Olfa’s attitude contributed to the tragedy. Apart from that, we see how societal changes influenced matters. Tunisia was relatively secular in many issues prior to the Arab Spring revolution and ironically it shifted towards greater religious conservatism subsequently, much of which can be seen in the strengthening of religious explanations and superstitions over scientific logic. One of the younger girls admits to having been brainwashed by what her older sister told her.
Although the reliability of the witnesses might not always be perfect, the documentary allows us to approach the mindset of a group that seldom get coverage in film: Arab women in a time and place where much change was occurring. A valuable and different piece of work.
4 stars plus
passionfilm 