Yahoo News Kino Lorber Buys U.S. Rights to Cannes Competition’s ‘Four Daughters’ by Oscar-Nominated Kaouther Ben Hania (EXCLUSIVE)
Kino Lorber has acquired U.S. rights to “Four Daughters,” Kaouther Ben Hania’s film which competed at the Cannes Film Festival.
The competition’s sole Arab film, “Four Daughters” mixes documentary and fiction to tell the story of a Tunisian mother whose two elder daughters joined ISIS. It won L’Oeil d’or or “Golden Eye” Award at Cannes for best documentary and is now set to roll off into the international festival circuit. Kino Lorber plans to release it theatrically this fall, followed by a digital and home video release on all major platforms.
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The New York-based distribution company has high hopes for “Four Daughters” during the next awards season. Last year’s L’Oeil d’Or winner, “All That Breathes,” went on to earn an Oscar nomination for best documentary. Ben Hania previously earned an Oscar nomination with her 2020 film “The Man Who Sold His Skin” in the international feature film category.
The film delves into the story of Tunisia’s Olfa Hamrouni who rose to international prominence in April 2016 when she publicized the radicalization of her two teenage daughters who had left Tunisia to fight with ISIS. Their complex family history is through intimate interviews and reenactments, featuring Egyptian-Tunisian star Hend Sabry as an actor who must play Hamrouni and gets coaching from the real Olfa on how to prepare for the role. It also stars two of the four daughters as themselves and actresses Ichraq Matar and Nour Karoui as the two other daughters lost to ISIS.
The film questions the nature of memory, the weight of inherited trauma, and the ties that bind mother and daughter.
The deal for “Four Daughters” was brokered by Kino Lorber Senior Vice President Wendy Lidell and Samuel Blanc for The Party Film Sales. In addition to the deals previously announced during Cannes, “Four Daughters” has also been sold to Canada (Mongrel / Metropole), Iceland (Bio Paradis), Baltic Countries (Estofilm), Portugal (Nitrato Filmes), Romania (Bad Unicorn), and Hungary (Vertigo Media). The German release will be handled by Rapid Eye Movies.
“We were immediately captivated by Kaouther Ben Hania’s powerful documentary Four Daughters, a riveting piece of filmmaking that takes an innovative and provocative approach to nonfiction storytelling,” said Lidell.
“Ben Hania casts accomplished actors to perform alongside her real-life documentary subjects, adding a layer of complexity that gives agency to her collaborators and mines truth from the space it occupies between fact and memory,” Lidell continued.
Variety critic Jessica Kiang in her review called “Four Daughters” a “Compelling, ambitious hybrid” and noted that one of the aspects that makes the film gripping is that “We’re not used to seeing this overtly experimental an approach applied to a story about the daily struggles of Arab women in a majority-Islamic North African country.”
“Four Daughters” is produced by Tanit Films, in association with Cinetelefilms and Twenty Twenty in co-production with Red Sea Film Festival Foundation, ZDF/Arte, and Jour2Fête. The film is produced by Nadim Cheikhrouha in association with Habib Attia and Thanassis Karathanos.
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