The core of this narrative is maternal love, symbolizing hope in a region of the world where much remains to be done to overcome deeply rooted traditions that oppress women and other minorities. [Full review in Spanish]

| Nov 19, 2024

Inviting viewers to consider our own histories of misogyny — whether conscious or unwitting, expressed or internalized — "Four Daughters" blurs the distance between the personal and cultural, the individual and the systemic.

| Oct 21, 2024

Ultimately, Four Daughters is one of the best documentaries I have ever seen, delivering a masterclass in documentary filmmaking, in a way that not only is engaging for its audience but also respectful of its delicate subject matter and participants.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Sep 14, 2024

Four Daughters is a story about a family torn apart by religious extremism and institutional misogyny. It's also about our inability to control the lives of those around us, even if it means losing them forever.

| Aug 1, 2024

The intersplicing between documentarian interviews and recreations of the past via actors may seem an odd choice at first, but this decision enhances the emotional earnestness of the subject.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 19, 2024

As Rahma and Ghofrane look for ways to rebel and embrace a morbid fundamentalism, Ben Hania’s film gradually transforms into a horror film, specifically demonic possession, but nothing supernatural is afoot. The only evil is a cycle of abuse

| Mar 24, 2024

A docudrama with a lovely way of blending real-life participants with actors, but its story of two teenage girls who escaped a disturbing and abusive homelife with their mother, is less successful in offering broader insight into why women joined IS

| Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 17, 2024

We see the power in tying together the fake and the real — the moment when method acting turns into method remembering.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Mar 14, 2024

It is not the first time that fictional reenactment has been employed in a documentary, but Kaouther Ben Hania takes it to very particular and contradictory levels in some scenes... in others, it is fascinating and moving. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 12, 2024

An impactful movie that layers documentary elements with dramatic acting to make a film within a film. By using some of the real-life people in the re-enactments, it's both an examination and cinematic therapy of a family's love and painful fracturing.

| Mar 10, 2024

As with Joshua Oppenheimer’s The Act of Killing (2012), the staging of scenes with people who lived through those events becomes an engrossing platform through which subject, performer, and audience can comprehend.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Mar 8, 2024

It's a kind of heartbreaking story of families being torn apart by hard-line religious dogma.

| Mar 6, 2024

Kaouther Ben Hania blends re-enactments using actors with the real-life family in a bid to unravel how half of this funny, warm, strong-willed quartet of feisty, smart, siblings went from heavy metal fans to wearing the niqab and joining Islamic State.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 1, 2024

Admittedly during rehearsals some deeper biographical insights are gleaned, but they come at a cost to the film’s narrative and intellectual clarity.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 1, 2024

[Kaouther Ben Hania's] technique could have made for purely formal game-playing: instead, the artifice casts a sharp magnifying gaze on real family agony and, against the odds, occasional joy.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Mar 1, 2024

A morbidly fascinating, morally murky but seemingly freeing window into how one family processes generational trauma.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 1, 2024

The ambition found here certainly makes for a compelling experience filled with rich details concerning resilient yet tortured individuals.

| Original Score: 8/10 | Feb 29, 2024

Four Daughters blends truth and fiction with rare transparency, and does it for a purpose. You won't see another film quite like it this year, or really any year.

| Feb 29, 2024

The Four Daughters ends up being devastating due to its content, and while its form makes it transcend and be interesting, it is not exempt from potential dissent or controversy. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 27, 2024

In documenting the Islamic radicalization which splits apart a family, Ben Hania’s film becomes something of a therapy session but “Four Daughters” is also often a joyous occasion of recollections, laughter and love.

| Original Score: B+ | Feb 25, 2024