Four Girls director on how the film came together – The Hollywood Reporter

At first, Kaouther Ben Hania couldn’t figure out why Four girls It must entail. She began working on the film in 2016 after seeing news reports about Olfa Hamrouni, a mother in Tunisia, the director’s home country, whose two teenage daughters ran away from home and joined ISIS in a stunning act of radicalization. Ben Hania thought she would make a traditional documentary, but after spending some time with Hamrouni, she realized the story was too complex for that. So I paused, and made a 2020 drama The man who sold his skin (which won the Academy Award for Best International Picture) and she returned with a new idea: she would hire actors to portray the family, including the missing Hamrouni children. Throughout filming, they reminisced and discussed family history alongside Hamrouni and her two young daughters.

The result is a profound meditation that blurs genre lines. Four girls It finds the family coaching the actors through meta-scenes in which the older girls become disillusioned with Hamrouni’s abrasive parenting style and embrace a shocking version of rebellion. Ben Hania likens the project to Brechtian theatre, with her subjects breaking the fourth wall to evaluate the sometimes horrific events being depicted. The film, which earned the director her second Oscar nomination, draws renewed attention to Hamrouni’s quest to secure the prosecution of her daughters, now imprisoned as jihadists in neighboring Libya. I talked to THR About how the film was put together and what it was like to watch Hamrouni reckon with reality.

What was the response of Olfa and her daughters when she explained to them the device she had created for the film?

They were happy. They were saying, “We knew what you were filming wasn’t good. Since we were alone, sitting in our house crying, it’s not good.” And now, by bringing in actresses – especially the actress who plays the mother (Hend Sabry, who is) a well-known star. Very much in Egyptian cinema – it’s like, “Now we can talk.”

Did you hire actors knowing that Olfa and the girls would end up in the director’s role? We see them mobilize and master what you have prepared for them to reenact as a makeshift family.

exactly. As you can see in the film, they are natural storytellers. They have the right words to describe it, which is their memories. My job was to create a safe space for them so they could take this introspective journey with the help of the actors.

After spending time with family, did you write the scripts for the re-enactments?

Nothing written. I chose (the actors) as their characters because, for me, they will express themselves in the film. I had bullet points for all the memories the family told me, and we would record one memory a day. We arrived at the filming location, and I would ask Olfa and sometimes the two daughters to tell the memory to the actors, and then they would act it out in one of the scenes. The actors then ask questions and interact with the family. What’s inside every scene are the actors’ words. In a way, everyone is a character in this documentary, even the actors.

The truly amazing thing about these re-creations is that sometimes it seems harder for the actors to perform the experience than it is for the family to relive it. Did that surprise you?

What I was suggesting to the actors in this film was not what they were used to doing. Being an actor is about having a character written down on paper and discussing motivations with the writer and director. Here, they have real people with a real story, so they’re not in their comfort zone at all. You see the actress who plays the alpha in the movie – she’s nervous at first waiting for the alpha to come, and then she says to the alpha: “I know how to protect myself.” It’s interesting to see how actors who are used to fantasy deal with the harsh reality.

Going into this, I assume that Olfa knew she had to be vulnerable in terms of talking about what drove her older daughters to leave home and indulge in this extremism. What were your conversations like when you prepared for the emotional investment needed to make a successful documentary?

A very frank familiarity. She’s unapologetic. She’s not hiding anything, and she can judge herself: “I’m a terrible mother, I’m a violent mother.” She’s such a larger-than-life character that I was thinking I should split her in two. That’s why I brought the actress in, so I could give her a mirror and they could have this discussion with its complexities. The cool thing about the family is that they’re not fans of cameras. When I called Alfa, she was already talking to journalists in Tunisia about her daughters. You won’t feel shy in front of the camera.

What does she hope or expect the immediate future will look like for her older daughters?

We are trying to put pressure on the Tunisian government so that it can get a fair trial. We’re doing our best, and we’re talking with the State Department, especially regarding the Oscar nomination.

Many filmmakers who make documentaries about social or political issues wonder how much they will invest when the cameras stop rolling. How long do you see yourself adhering to the family and their cause?

When you get into people’s lives, you never get out. They became a family because you shared so many strong things. It’s not like a work of fiction, where everyone moves on to play another role. This is their reality, so I knew from the beginning that I was entering their lives and would not exit after we finished the film. I love Olfa’s younger daughters very much. I’m very close to them, and I give them advice all the time. When they have problems, they call me.

How did you feel when you showed the film to Olva and the girls for the first time?

I was so nervous. Olfa used to say to me: “I know I’m terrible. Don’t show me the movie.” She told me she was going to see it at its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival. I told her: You will not watch your life with 2000 people for the first time. So she sent her daughters to see the movie, and they were really happy with it. They’d say, “Oh my God, we’re so pretty in the movie,” because they don’t talk much when their mom’s around. For the first time, we gave them the opportunity to have a voice. They said to their mother: Come. You’re terrible, but not only that. It’s okay.” “At least there’s some light on why I’m so terrible,” Alpha later said. Since then, they’ve been traveling with the film. Two weeks ago, they were in Germany for the theatrical release.

It’s interesting to hear Olfa describe herself this way. Do you think the process of making this film gave her the mirror she described so she could see herself?

When I started, I was thinking about the therapeutic aspect of the procedure, but I wasn’t sure. I thought to myself: “Maybe I’m overestimating my work.” But I saw Olfa’s face change. She was understanding things and saying things to her daughters for the first time. It made relationships better, and I think it made someone’s familiarity better too. I grew up in a very tough neighborhood. She was surrounded by violent and uncaring people. So she had judgment of her daughters in her mind, and for her, doing this film with her daughters was an expression of non-judgment. It was a very important experience for her.

What led the girls to ISIS is presented as an extreme act of youth rebellion. Did you go into it with any preconceived idea of ​​why, or did that come to you through conversations you had with the family?

My desire to make this film was to understand why these two girls went down this pathological path. I didn’t have an answer at the time. I only had prejudices like everyone else, it was because of ignorance, because of poverty. The classic teenage rebellion and desire for freedom – which is counterintuitive – was amazing to me. As I connected the dots in the story, I realized that these girls simply wanted to be free, but were severely abused, unloved, poor and suspected of becoming bad women. All of these things made them ready to go there because, as we see in the movie, they could finally have some power over their mother. Finally they can feel important because they can lecture the people they are lecturing. This shift in power was very fascinating to me.

This story first appeared in the February standalone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To obtain the magazine, click here to subscribe.