Journalist and filmmaker Claire Belhassine chats to FOUR DAUGHTERS director Kaouther Ben Hania about her Oscar®-nominated documentary. From the origins of the story to working with actors on a documentary set, Claire and Kaouther look at the making of FOUR DAUGHTERS.
Listen to the podcast and take a browse through our notes on Four Daughters below.
CLAIRE: Do you think that being a woman helped you tell Olfa’s story and get closer to her?
KAOUTHER: I was attracted to this story because it's a woman's story. And I think that the characters in this movie were confident and trusted me because I'm a woman; we can understand each other without any tension. When I started this project many years ago, it was in 2016 and the first impulsion to do this story was when I heard the mother talking publicly about her daughters on Tunisian TV and radio. I wanted to know more, I wanted to understand. Because it was a headline and you know, how is it about headlines… we have the part that impacts people, but nobody understand the origins or how things went. So we can have this tragedy. And I was more interested in that. Because these kind of stories usually belong to men, and here suddenly we have young girls attracted by this path. And it was very interesting to me.
CLAIRE: What made you want to tell this story now?
KAOUTHER: Context for me— maybe it's shocking to say— it's not important in storytelling. Context is just context. It's like a colour. What is important is the vibrant hurt of a story, and the vibrant hurt of this story is a mother daughter relationship. It's a coming of age story. So for me, this was the most important thing to tell and to explore and all the rest- them being Tunisian, them being in this historical context - contribute to the story. It's like the music.
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