Nominated for an Academy Award
for Best Documentary Feature
Olfa Hamrouni, a divorced mother of four, discovers two of her daughters have vanished. It is 2016 in Tunisia, in the wake of the Arab Spring, and she soon learns they have run off to Syria to join ISIS. Writer-director Kaouther Ben Hania mixes the real Olfa and her two youngest daughters with professional actors who play the vanished sisters in a cinematict attempt to understand why. The film was a FilmColumbia23 selection and winner of a Cannes Golden Eye.
“An enthralling narrative about memory, motherhood and the inherited traumas of a patriarchal society.” — Lovia Gyarkye, The Hollywood Reporter
“This is a heartbreaker about mothers and daughters, the cruelty of repression and the slippery but revealing nature of performance.” — Justin Chang, The Los Angeles Times
directed by
Kaouther Ben Hania
Kaouther Ben Hania
written by
Kaouther Ben Hania
Kaouther Ben Hania
with
Olfa Hamrouni, Eya Chikhaoui, Tayssir Chikhaoui
Olfa Hamrouni, Eya Chikhaoui, Tayssir Chikhaoui
language
Arabic (with English subtitles)
Arabic (with English subtitles)
country
Morocco
Morocco