The story sounds so incredible and horrifying that it seems like fiction to us. Two of Olfa’s daughters, Rhama and Gho­frane, become radicalised and vanish from Tunisia one day, to join the Islamic State in Libya. The gap is filled by actresses. The film takes us along into the inner circle of a family structure in the aim of telling a larger story of our times. The pain is personal, the effects are global, in this heavily lauded and honoured documentary, Tunisia’s candidate for the 2024 foreign-film Oscar.

In FOUR DAUGHTERS, the director experiments with documentary and fictional formats – not for the sake of experimentation, but instead to show how sometimes truth can only be comprehended by looking beneath the surface of the visible.

Kaouther Ben Hania, born in Sidi Bouzid/Tunisia in 1977, studied filmmaking in Tunis and Paris. Her first feature-length film THE CHALLAT OF TUNIS achieved international success. In 2017, her fiction film BEAUTY AND THE DOGS won the award for Best Sound Creation at Cannes. Her film THE MAN WHO SOLD HIS SKIN (2020) was nominated for the 2021 foreign-film Oscar. Her fictional documentary FOUR DAUGHTERS received numerous awards and is the Tunisian entry for the 2024 Oscar edition.

Filmography (selection): 2014 THE CHALLAT OF TUNIS, 2017 BEAUTY AND THE DOGS, 2020 THE MAN WHO SOLD HIS SKIN, 2023 FOUR DAUGHTERS

Awards (selection): François Chalais Prize and L’Œil d’Or for Best Documentary (Cannes International Film Festival, France 2023), ARRI/OSRAM Award for Best Film (Filmfest München, Munich/Germany 2023)