Four Daughters

Four Daughters is a story about a family torn apart by religious extremism and institutional misogyny. It's also about our inability to control the lives of those around us, even if it means losing them forever.

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.

The core of this narrative is maternal love, symbolizing hope in a region of the world where much remains to be done to overcome deeply rooted traditions that oppress women and other minorities. [Full review in Spanish]

Inviting viewers to consider our own histories of misogyny — whether conscious or unwitting, expressed or internalized — "Four Daughters" blurs the distance between the personal and cultural, the individual and the systemic.

Ultimately, Four Daughters is one of the best documentaries I have ever seen, delivering a masterclass in documentary filmmaking, in a way that not only is engaging for its audience but also respectful of its delicate subject matter and participants.

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.