Cinema Can Do Performing Documentary: Les filles d’Olfa

The range of documentary forms in contemporary cinema has received a great deal of attention at Arsenal over the last 25 years. Performing Documentary has cast a particularly long shadow, a program from June 2011 that identified a new, experimental, performative variant of the documentary and placed it in a discursive context for the first time: films which work with explicit staging, alienation effects and performative appearances. The phenomenon has gone from strength to strength since then – a current example is LES FILLES D’OLFA (Four Daughters), in which Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania reveals a family trauma with political implications: in conversations and staged scenes, Olfa Hamrouni and her two youngest daughters reconstruct their shocking family story, supported by two young women who play the eldest daughter who disappeared and film star Hend Sabri, who plays Olfa when the situation becomes too much, but also protects the daughters. Acting and reflection go hand in hand with breathtaking intensity. (bik)