Four Daughters

We see the power in tying together the fake and the real — the moment when method acting turns into method remembering.

It's a kind of heartbreaking story of families being torn apart by hard-line religious dogma.

Admittedly during rehearsals some deeper biographical insights are gleaned, but they come at a cost to the film’s narrative and intellectual clarity.

[Kaouther Ben Hania's] technique could have made for purely formal game-playing: instead, the artifice casts a sharp magnifying gaze on real family agony and, against the odds, occasional joy.

Four Daughters blends truth and fiction with rare transparency, and does it for a purpose. You won't see another film quite like it this year, or really any year.

It frequently leaves us wondering how much of what we’re seeing is actual family history and how much of it is a manipulated or exaggerated version. The film is never less than riveting, wherever the truth lies.

The intersplicing between documentarian interviews and recreations of the past via actors may seem an odd choice at first, but this decision enhances the emotional earnestness of the subject.

As Rahma and Ghofrane look for ways to rebel and embrace a morbid fundamentalism, Ben Hania’s film gradually transforms into a horror film, specifically demonic possession, but nothing supernatural is afoot. The only evil is a cycle of abuse

A docudrama with a lovely way of blending real-life participants with actors, but its story of two teenage girls who escaped a disturbing and abusive homelife with their mother, is less successful in offering broader insight into why women joined IS

A compelling, touching story of memory and generational trauma, it’s a heartbreaking roadmap to radicalization marked with a family’s despair.