Saturday, March 9, 2024

Four Daughters (2023)

Nominated for Best Documentary Feature    Content warning:  discussion of spousal abuse, child abuse, CSA

Olfa grew up in Tunisia in a house of only daughters.  She learned to dress as a boy to defend herself and her mother from men looking to hurt them, only to be sold in marriage to a man she didn't love.  She had four daughters, Ghofrane, Rahma, Eya, and Tayssir.  Terrified of them coming to harm at the hands of violent men, she encouraged the older two when they became interested in wearing the hijab, but was unable to stop their descent into radical fundamentalism.

This is a strange documentary because it involves hiring actors to recreate certain scenes.  On the one hand, I think that's great because it gives the real people a break from having to go through their particular traumas over and over, but on the other, it's kind of stretching what the definition of a documentary is.  I think it works here because Olfa, Eya, and Tayssir are so heavily involved but it does blur some lines.  I wouldn't like to see it become the standard format.

I will say, I felt like there had been kind of a bait and switch throughout the majority of the movie **SPOILER ALERT** because they make it seem like Ghofrane and Rahma are dead and they are very much not, just in prison **END SPOILER**.  It's not a deal-breaker but it does feel a little anticlimactic.  

It's an emotional movie, very raw in parts, with extremely charismatic subjects.  If that is your bag, it is currently streaming for free (with a library card) on Kanopy.

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