Olfa Hamrouni: Film “Olfa’s Daughters”: Fiction overtakes life

It was just supposed to be fun and a small business. When Salafist preachers in Tunis distribute niqabs for free, Ghofrane and her sisters get some to sell on. Giggling, they try on the full veil. But Ghofrane doesn’t take it off anymore. She radicalized herself, bullied the “infidel” family, tried to prevent her three younger sisters from going to school, and in 2016 the 16-year-old joined the Islamic State in Libya. Shortly afterwards she is followed by the second eldest sister Rhama. The two Tunisians are now in a Libyan prison, and the daughter of Ghofrane and an IS fighter is growing up behind bars.

Olfa Hamrouni, the mother of what she described as “eaten by wolves,” turned to the media in her distress and criticized the Tunisian authorities’ inaction. So her compatriot, director Kaouther Ben Hania, came up with the idea of ​​making a film about the strong and charismatic mother and her daughters. There was just one problem: “Olfa was being conditioned by journalists. She played the role of the grieving, hysterical and guilt-ridden mother with a great sense of tragedy (…) As soon as I turned on my camera, she began to play a certain role.«

Out of necessity, Ben Hania, always fascinated “by the difficult relationship between fiction and documentary,” developed a brilliant idea that won her the prize for best documentary at Cannes: “I realized that a documentary about the preparation of a film Making fake fiction that would never see the light of day was the best way to bring Olfa back to reality and her memories.«

She hires three actresses – two to play the absent daughters, and the Tunisian actor Hend Sabri is supposed to take on her role in some scenes in which things become too upsetting for the real Olfa. The remaining sisters, who wear their hair down and dress modernly, play themselves.

But the introspective chamber play, shot in the aesthetically reduced setting of a run-down hotel, focuses less on recreating specific experiences than on what this cinematic family constellation triggers in the real protagonists. The audience members are there as they get to know each other and pose in the roles (which already evokes strong emotions), as the family members (supposedly) brief the actresses, as they exchange ideas with the director, and as the actresses reflect on how they can differentiate themselves . One wonders whether the briefing and filming of some films based on a true story might be more captivating than the final product.

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Sabri questions Olfa, confronts her with criticism, tries to understand why the single mother, who makes a living as a cleaner, reacted with violence when the eldest daughters started putting on make-up and flirting with boys. The mother corrects the actress and spontaneously plays a scene herself.

Meanwhile, the actor Majd Mastura takes on all the male roles: Olfa’s husband, whom she beat up on her wedding night after the forced marriage in order to be able to present the obligatory blood on the bedsheet, and from whom she divorced; her drug-addicted lover, from whom the daughters suffered; Representatives of the authorities – even if the manifestations change, patriarchy always remains the same. However, Ben Hania also documents the actor’s ethical concerns about her approach: Mastura interrupts a very emotional scene because a daughter reveals intimacies that he believes do not belong in public.

In fact, Ben Hania and her “therapeutic laboratory” penetrate depths that no report can reach. She brings out what has been repressed and allows the family members to express what has not been said before. One of the daughters comes to the realization that her mother “just passed on to us everything that was done to her, that’s why she calls it a curse.” There is crying, laughter, comfort – a sisterly bond between the film team and the protagonists becomes noticeable. And the Western viewer better understands the situation of women exposed to Islamist propaganda when the very reflective younger sisters explain that many girls wear the niqab because it gives them more freedom of movement and because they are afraid of being seen as sinful “im “To be tortured to the grave.” Her sober summary: “We wouldn’t be allowed to make this film in the Islamic State.”

»Olfa’s Daughters«, France, Tunisia, Germany, Saudi Arabia 2023. Director: Kaouther Ben Hania. With: Hend Sabri, Olfa Hamrouni, Eya Chikhaoui, Tayssir Chikhaoui, Nour Karoui, Ichraq Matar. 110 minutes. Start: January 18th

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