★★★★★ OUT 1 MARCH CINEMAS
Writer/director Kaouther Ben Hania’s fascinating Oscarnominated documentary relates the story of Tunisian woman Olfa Hamrouni and her four daughters, two of whom fled to Libya in 2015 to join Islamic State. Shooting in a disused Tunis hotel, Hania experiments boldly with form, using first-person testimony from Olfa and her two younger children, rehearsals with actors playing the mother and the absent older siblings, and filmed reenactments of family memories. What’s revealed is a cycle of suffering in which traumatic experiences are tragically passed from generation to generation.