“The Girls of Olfa” by Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania made an impression at the Cannes Film Festival.
The film, which will be released on Wednesday July 5, tells the true story of the Chikhaoui family, led by Olfa, mother of four daughters, in Tunisia. The family came to prominence in 2016 when the two older, radicalized sisters fled to fight alongside Daesh in Libya.
>> “Les Filles d’Olfa”, original and sensitive Tunisian docu-fiction about a family disrupted by Daesh
The filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania then met the three other women of the family, with the idea of this feature film. The documentary contains fictional passages. For lack of being able to film the eldest daughters, imprisoned, it is two actresses who play their role and replay family memories. “When I started with them, I didn’t know what form I was going to give to this story, assures Kaouther Ben Hania. I started filming Olfa with her two daughters at home. I felt there was something missing. In the form of a classic documentary, I couldn’t dig into the past.
“There was this question of the past. How to revive the past, reconvene the past, but not only, reconvene it, question it.”
Kaouther Ben Hania, directorfranceinfo
Olfa’s daughters is therefore a mixture of reality, fiction, but also behind the scenes of the shooting. For an impressive result, disconcerting, crossed by an intense emotion, a lot of harshness, tears, but also sometimes welcome humor. The film also raises the question of patriarchy in Tunisian society, arranged marriages, sexual abuse, but also conservatism and comments on the outfits of young women in the street.
A project experienced as family and female therapy
“I designed this film as therapy, but not just for them, explains director Kaouther Ben Hania. I have a predominantly female team, so everything they said, we knew it, we lived it in one way or another. We told each other our stories. It was very intense. It was an emotionally very strong shoot.”
We come out of the film stunned, moved and overwhelmed by the strength and courage of Olfa and her daughters, and the portrait of this unclassifiable mother. In selection at Cannes, Olfa’s daughters had divided, some finding that the device, sometimes confused in their eyes, served its purpose.