Olfa Hamrouni is the divorced mother of four daughters. In April 2016 she briefly became the focus of international attention when her elder daughters Ghofrane and Rahma fled from Tunisia to Libya to join the Islamic State terrorist organisation. In this striking and effective documentary, Tunisian filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania helps Olfa – and remaining daughters Eya and Tayssir – re-enact their family tragedy with the assistance of a group of actors.

With two films, Kaouther Ben Hania has shot near the top of my favourite contemporary filmmakers. Her 2017 drama Beauty and the Dogs, which tracks the aftermath of a sexual assault, is a harrowing and Kafka-esque nightmare of bureaucratic patriarchy. Now with Four Daughters, she provides not only a thought-provoking insight into the politics and culture of the Arab world but a valuable profile of human nature. It draws the viewer in with an arresting premise, but what the film is really about is inter-generational trauma.

There are essentially two things going on during the film. Its ostensible purpose is to replay events in Olfa and her family’s life: an unhappy marriage, her relationship with her children, the struggles of single-parenting, and the effects of the Arab Spring. For these scenes Olf, Eya and Tayssir play themselves in loose re-enactments. To play their now-absent sisters, Ben Hania casts lookalike actors Ichraq Matar and Nour Karoui. They take their cues and direction to a large degree from Eye and Tayssir. Whenever Olfa becomes too upset reliving her traumas, Ben Hania drops in another stand-in: noted actor Hend Sabry.

It creates an unusual atmosphere: part abstract drama, part documentary, it builds not only as autobiography by Olfa but biography thanks to the commentary of her daughters. It builds a picture, scene by scene, not of a mystery of radicalised daughters but a tragedy of a flawed child growing up to inflict their own wounds as a parent. It is a process that seems raw at times, and veers towards exploitation, but which ultimately arrives at a sympathetic and deeply patient point of view.

For international audiences, it is easy to watch foreign cultures and people through the simplified lens of news media and a hegemonic, primarily American perspective. Ben Hania actively side-steps simple positions. Her film does not judge what it sees. It avoids sympathy in favour of empathy. It exposes counter-intuitive revelations and emotional ambiguities. I often think the best dramas showcase the world as it could be, and documentaries the world as it is. Rarely is that reality rendered in such gentle clarity as it is in Four Daughters.

Four Daughters is currently screening at the Melbourne International Film Festival. Click here for more information.