A sensation at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival and awarded 4 prizes, Les Filles d’Olfa arrives in cinemas from July 5. A moving work, of a crazy sensitivity and illuminated by a process mixing fiction and reality, to discover without further delay.
WHAT DOES IT TALK ABOUT ?
The life of Olfa, Tunisian and mother of 4 daughters, oscillates between shadow and light. One day, her two eldest daughters disappear. To make up for their absence, director Kaouther Ben Hania summons professional actresses and sets up an extraordinary film system to lift the veil on the story of Olfa and her daughters.
An intimate journey made of hope, rebellion, violence, transmission and sisterhood that will question the very foundation of our societies.
WHEN REALITY PUSHES THE LIMITS OF CINEMA
2015, Tunisia: a news item made headlines and hit the headlines around the world. Olfa Hamrouni summons all the media and tries to do everything to find her two eldest daughters. They left the country to join the jihad and fight in Libya alongside Daesh. At the time, this mother did not hesitate to publicly criticize the Tunisian authorities, whom she accused of having done nothing to prevent the departure of her daughters.
Much more than a simple affair, the director Kaouther Ben Hania sees in this subject a theme on which to shine the light, that of a form of curse which would like us to reproduce violence from generation to generation, all against a background of patriarchy. Wishing then to make a documentary on this story, the filmmaker contacted Olfa Hamrouni to convince her to be filmed in the company of her two younger daughters, who remained with her.
DR
The goal: that these three women can speak with an open heart about their opinion on the question, tell their life and confide in front of the camera on their discords. To accompany them, Kaouther Ben Hania calls on three actresses: two young women embodying the eldest missing girls, and the renowned actress Hend Sabri in the role of Olfa Hamrouni, for the hardest and most painful sequences.
AN IMPRESSIVE AND MULTI-AWARD-WINNING WORK
Risky, the director’s bet turns out to be brilliantly taken up in a feature film of impressive scale, illuminated by a device never seen before, where the artifices of cinema open the way to deep and overwhelming introspection. Combining fiction and reality, Les Filles d’Olfa offers a realistic, fine and concrete analysis of radicalism and the way it can tear a family apart, but also of political, ideological and social deconstruction.
Presented in Official Competition at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival, the film did not take long to create the enthusiasm of the first spectators and the press, seeing here “A stunning work. Our golden palm”, for Le Parisien, or a “unforgettable emotional intensity”, according to Télérama.
As a result, the feature film won no less than 4 prizes at the end of the event: The Golden Eye, the Citizenship Prize, the Positive Cinema Prize, as well as a mention of the François-Chalais Prize. rewarding a film devoted to the values of journalism. A long list making Daughters of Olfa the most awarded work of this 76ᵉ edition, but above all a film not to be missed under any circumstances.
The Daughters of Olfa, by Kaouther Ben Hania, currently in the cinema.