Cult Movie Mondays: Four Daughters (2023, Tunisia)

Olfa Hamrouni raised four daughters in Tunisia. Two of them are still with her; the other two were radicalized and left to join ISIS in Libya, and never came back. Rather than a straightforward documentary, director Kaouther Ben Hania casts actresses to play the two missing daughters and stand in for Olfa herself during Four Daughters' most painful re-enactments - turning the film into something closer to a documentary, a stage play, and a therapy session happening simultaneously, in real time, on camera. It won the documentary prize at Cannes and came within reach of a historic Oscar double nomination, for both Best Documentary and Best International Feature. The structure sounds like a gimmick on paper, but in practice it becomes the film's whole argument - that some stories can only be told by re-living them alongside the people who survived them. Screen International called it a potent, probing and occasionally manipulative hybrid documentary, while Phil de Semlyen of Time Out described it as a daring and emotional act of cinematic therapy. Cult Movie Mondays: Four Daughters (2023, Tunisia) Monday, September 21st | 8:00 PM | TicTic, Phnom Penh Free Entry & Popcorn - Arrive early for sofa, bed, or beanbag seating.