It’s the most awarded film of Cannes 2023 and will blow your mind: why you should see Les Filles d’Olfa in cinemas

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For Olfa, Tunisian and mother of 4 daughters, life oscillates between shadow and light. One day his two eldest daughters disappear. To make up for their absence, director Kauter Ben Hania enlists professional actors and sets up an extraordinary cinematography to lift the veil on the story of Olfa and her daughters.

An intimate journey of hope, rebellion, violence, surrender and siblings that will question the very foundations of our societies.

When reality pushes the boundaries of cinema

2015, Tunisia: News headlines and headlines around the world. Olfa Hamrun calls all the media and tries to do everything to find her two eldest daughters. They left the country to join the jihad and fight alongside Daesh in Libya. At the time, the mother did not hesitate to publicly criticize the Tunisian authorities, whom she accused of doing nothing to prevent her daughters from leaving.

Much more than a simple case, director Kauter Ben Hania sees in this theme a theme to shine a light on, a form of curse that we want to reproduce the violence from generation to generation, all against the background of patriarchy. Wanting to make a documentary about the story, a filmmaker contacted Olfa Hamrun to convince her to film with her two younger daughters, who stayed with her.

The goal: for these three women to be able to open their hearts when asked about their opinions, tell their lives and confide their differences in front of the camera. To accompany them, Kauter Ben Hania calls on three actors: two young women who portray the oldest lost girls and the famous actress Hand Sabri as Olfa Hamrun, for the hardest and most painful sequences.

Impressive and multi-award winning work

Risky, the director’s bet is brilliantly taken in a feature film of impressive scale, illuminated by a never-before-seen device where cinematography paves the way for deep and overwhelming introspection. Blending fiction and reality, Les Filles d’Olfa offers a realistic, nuanced and concrete analysis of radicalism, how it can tear apart a family, but also a political, ideological and social deconstruction.

Presented in Official Competition at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival, it didn’t take long to generate initial audience and press enthusiasm, see here “Stunning work. Our Golden PalmFor Le Parisien, orUnforgettable emotional intensityTélérama reports.

As a result, the feature film won no less than 4 prizes at the end of the event: the Golden Eye, the Citizenship Prize, the Positive Cinema Prize, as well as the François-Chalet Prize Mention. Awarded for a film dedicated to the values ​​of journalism. A long list that makes Olfa’s Daughters the most awarded work of this 76 ᵉ edition, but above all a film that should not be missed under any circumstances.

Daughters of Olfa, Kauter Ben Hania, currently in cinema.