With a film that deals with the roots of extremism

Tunisia's Kaouther Ben Hania competes for Palme d'Or at Cannes

Ben Hania's film is a hybrid mix between documentary and fiction. Archival

In her film "Daughters of Olfa", which was screened last Friday evening in the official competition of the Cannes Film Festival, director Kaouther Ben Hania narrates the "curse" that has befallen the family of Olfa, a Tunisian woman facing the slide of two of her daughters towards extremism and terrorism.

The directors of On the Palm of a Goblin (2017) and The Man Who Sold His Back (2020) wanted her film, which is competing for the Palme d'Or at the 76th Festival de Cannes, to be a hybrid mix between documentary and fiction.

It seems to the viewer that he is in front of a documentary about the filming of another film, the one that deals with the story of Tunisian Olfa Hamrouni, whose name became famous around the world in 2016, after she publicly raised the issue of the extremism of her two teenage daughters, Rahma and Ghufran. The sisters left Tunisia to fight for ISIS in Libya, where they were arrested and imprisoned.

Ben Hania's fifth feature film, blends with the novelist in a distinctive way in which the Tunisian director, who competes with six other women for the Palme d'Or, seeks to find the root of the problem by addressing the masculine character of society that crushes women.