"A mother is like a cat, sometimes they're so scared for their babies they eat them" Please break the chains.

I have to applaud "Four Daughters" for the fact that this documentary takes a fresh approach. The story of the Tunisian woman Olfa and her four daughters, two of whom have become radicalized and joined the IS, is presented here in a mix of real-life people and actors. Documentary and fiction are mixed together, and this experiment certainly has its charm but also leads to confusing moments from time to time. And for my taste, the movie also consists of too many sequences in which extended conversations take place on a couch. The narrative style doesn't necessarily ensure that you get a really deep insight into the when or why of the two daughters' radicalization. Instead, "Four Daughters" is more of a therapy session for the daughters left behind as well as Olfa herself, who is confronted with her own failures as a mother. In any case, the protagonists are engaging, so there is definitely something to take away from this documentary. However, the "twist" at the end could have been left out, and the fate of the missing daughters could have been revealed beforehand.

Like receiving a model heart for your birthday, it's not what you expected but the novelty and the inner workings make it a good idea. Four Daughters is basically the making-of of itself, meaning it's the BTS shots of the people who play themselves and the actors who play them as well in reenactments of Olfa, a Tunisian mother, the four daughters she raised and the troubles all of them have. Making the film as a BTS project was a great idea, though the middle gets a little slow as they put off for far too long the 'punch line' of why Olfa's two oldest daughters are not there. By the time they spill the beans, we're no longer hungry and what they deliver is surprisingly modest compared to what we imagined was coming.