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Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. Now we continue our Oscar season series of interviews with the creators of the five Oscar-nominated feature length documentaries. We do this every year. Some of you know that. While most other media focused on best actor, best film, Barbie, we do the documentary check. We started with the Ugandan documentary, Bobby Wine: The People's President. Today we turn to Tunisia and a film that while it's in the documentary category, shares a lot with narrative fiction films. Words like meta and genre crossing have been used to describe it. The film is called Four Daughters, and its writer and director, filmmaker, Kaouther Ben Hania, joins me now.

Welcome back to WNYC, and congratulations on the nomination.

Kaouther Ben Hania: Thank you for having me, and good morning.

Brian Lehrer: Good morning. The story at the heart of your film, I'll tell our listeners, got some media coverage in 2016, which is how it came to your attention, I see, and I thought I would play a little of how NPR introduced a report by Leila Fadil on this family at that time.

Speaker 3: One mother tried to keep her daughters from joining ISIS. She lives in Tunisia.

Speaker 4: It's a country with a precarious new democracy, the place where the Arab Spring started in 2011.

Speaker 3: It's a country with many links to Europe.

Speaker 4: It's also part of the Arab and Muslim worlds, and is inevitably drawn toward the conflicts of the Middle East.

Speaker 3: More than 5,000 Tunisians, women, as well as men, have joined militant groups abroad. It can be as easy as crossing the border from Tunisia next door into Libya. Piers Leila Fadil spoke with a mother who wanted to keep her daughters at home.

Brian Lehrer: That was the intro to the story, and your film tells the story of that mother, Olfa, and her four daughters, the two youngest of whom participated in the film, but the two older girls did join ISIS in Libya, or as the film puts it, were devoured by the wolf. You wanted to get beyond what made the news back then and tell this in more detail. Is that the point of the film?

Kaouther Ben Hania: Yes, I've heard about this story like this on Tunisian media, and I wanted to understand why. It was a huge question mark for me, so I met the mother and told her that I want to do a documentary. I want to dig deep in the reasons that pushes those two girls to join a terrorist organization, to understand because it was, as I said-- All the answers I could get at the time were very cliché answer, very one-sided answer. When I don't understand something, I do a movie, and here we have Four Daughters many years after telling the story of those four daughters from the point of view of those who stay so the mother and the two young daughters.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, if anybody's seen this film, Four Daughters, and or you have a question for the director, you can give us a call, 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, for Kaouther Ben Hania, 212-433-9692, call or text.

Let me ask you about the filmmaking, because as I understand it, you started making a so-called normal documentary interviewing the mother and the younger daughters, but eventually you came up with the idea of bringing in actors. We have this meta, as I think you've described it, or others have described it, filmmaking in the documentary category. Why did you do it this way?

Kaouther Ben Hania: Because I needed, as I said, to understand, I needed to dig deep in the past of this family. When you want to do documentary, how you film the past is the main problem. The question for us documentary filmmaker, and there is a well-used cliché, which is reenactment. I tried to hijack this cliché and use it in another way. Mainly we have in this movie, Four Daughters, the real character, the mother and the two young daughters directing and playing with actors to bring their memories from the past and try to analyze those memories.

It's an open discussion about what happened really and how this tragedy was born. The fact that we have actors in the movie, we think always about fiction, but as you say, that's a meta documentary where actors say we are actors and will help this family to understand what happened. By the way, the movie I've been touring a lot since the premiere at Cannes Film Festival and the main competition. Until today, those who are fond of my movie are actors because beside the story of this mother and her two daughters, it's a movie also about how to represent reality and what does it mean to be an actor playing real people life. I know that actors like a lot Four Daughters.

Brian Lehrer: Did you get any answers that might be new to our listeners as to why people join ISIS?

Kaouther Ben Hania: I can't have this pretension to answer to this question for everybody. I think that I can answer maybe for this family for those two girls, and there are answers in the movie. It's not a simple answer. Nothing is simple in those stories. Life is complex, and the movie is trying to embrace this complexity, not to simplify things, to be not judgmental, to try to understand. All this complexity in the movie is shown at least I tried to share it with the audience in a very coherent way so they can understand, but also they can feel, because we are talking about a movie.

It's a movie where you can laugh, you can cry, you can leave all the spectrum of known emotions. At least this is what I felt when I was shooting it and I wanted to share this with the audience.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. The political comes in, in that Tunisia was the country that launched the Arab Spring, really, overthrowing a dictatorship to install democracy. That dictatorship had banned the hijab or head covering for women, even when they wanted to wear it voluntarily, and kept Arab extremism at bay. How do you reconcile political freedom and the freedom to demand women cover themselves head to foot.

Kaouther Ben Hania: Politician, especially in dictatorship, they try to intervene, and every personal details and women bodies have been like a political terrain for politician. As you said, Tunisia was the starting point of the Arab Spring, but for me, the Arab Spring is continuing even today because there is no revolution that gave its result like the day after. It's a long process when you get rid of dictatorship. From my point of view of a filmmaker, I'm not politician, although I'm very interested in politics, this movie and the other movie I've did were possible and finance it also by Tunisian money because of the revolution, because we got freedom of speech so I can talk about hard things in Tunisian society.

It can also touch everybody elsewhere because, as you said, the movie is now nominated for an Oscar, so it's shown in many, many countries, which is great for a filmmaker.

Brian Lehrer: One of the themes of the film, I think it's accurate to say, is the way that Olfa, the mother, was hurt by her mother and sister and wasn't able to treat her daughters any differently, and her fear of their sexuality led her to embrace their turn to fundamentalism at first. Would you say that's an accurate description? Did making the movie help her process that?

Kaouther Ben Hania: Yes, I think we can see it in the movie, she's trying to go in this introspective journey to understand what happened. She goes back to how she was educated by her mother. She's talking at some point in the movie about the curse. She's describing this inheritance of violence and misogyny from generation to generation like a curse, but I think she's referring to the patriarchy because she thought if she will embrace the toxic patriarchy ideas, she will protect her daughters.

When she did so, she was oppressing them. Those girls, we see them in the movie, they become, at some point when they were teenager, goths listening to metal music, becoming rebellious. The day after, they became radicalized. They were searching something outside of their mother oppression. As you said in the beginning, and as I say in the movie, they were devoured by the wolf like little riding red hood in the woods, they met the wolf, and then we have this tragedy happening.

Brian Lehrer: They met the wolf, the wolf being ISIS. Listener who saw the film writes, "The mother in this film seems conflicted between social, and religious norms, and their context, and her own feminist impulses. The daughters who stayed did not join ISIS, also seem so traumatized. Heart-wrenching."

Here's a caller who saw the film. Jane in Chatham, New Jersey, you're on WNYC. Hi, Jane.

Jane: Hi. I saw this film last year as part of a film festival. It's really a tremendous movie. For me, I was struck by two things. First of all, the two daughters that became radicalized, they actually saw the burka as a form of freedom. It gave them freedom, which is something that had never occurred to me. The other thing is that all the men in the movie were played by the same actor, and the message was implicitly that all men are kind of the same. It was just a beautiful, wonderful movie, and I'm so glad I got to see it.

Brian Lehrer: Jane, thank you. Anything you want to say to that listener's observation? Would you say that men were portrayed in the way that she describes?

Kaouther Ben Hania: Thank you, Jane. Yes, because I have such a beautiful gallery of women portray in the movie between the real character, the mother, the two daughters, and the actresses, I wanted to simplify things from the men's side. It's not to say all the men are the same, but at least in Olfa's life and in this family life, those men, you can change them, they have the same impact in those women's life.

Then I'm very happy about what Jane said about the counterintuitive thing about being radicalized, because what I discovered in this movie that the two girls radicalization is to be in a way powerful because they are teenager. They were 15 and 16. They were accused by their father and their surrounding to become easy women, we can say. To defend themselves, they found this offer of radicalization, and it gives them powers.

We see in the movie at some point, they are lecturing their mother. They become, for the first time, powerful toward their mother. She is a very oppressive mother. It can seem counterintuitive, but it was one of the thing I discovered while doing this movie.

Brian Lehrer: We are in our annual Oscar Documentary Series here on The Brian Lehrer Show. Each year, we interview the makers of the five documentaries nominated for Best Feature Length Documentary at the Oscars. My guest today is the director and filmmaker, Kaouther Ben Hania, who made the movie, Four Daughters, that we're talking about, nominated for an Oscar. We just have a few minutes left.

I want to ask you a little bit more about the genre-bending, as people have called it, making of this film, the fact that, though it's a documentary, you use some actors, as well as the real people in the film. You have the actors there with the real characters, and the actors recreating some of the real characters for the film, and you're using professional actors also to help the real people get past the performances that they created for the media. That can all be very confusing when I describe it. How will a viewer experience this?

Kaouther Ben Hania: It was amazing because, as you said, it can be very confusing, but when you see the movie, I tried to make it very coherent. It's a very tough exercise, but at the end, it gives me the possibility, the fact that they have actors, to show all the facet, and all the complexity, and all the multilayered aspect of this story in a very simple way to share it with the audience. It was a great experience, human experience, first of all.

Then for me as a filmmaker, I experimented a lot. What people don't know maybe is that the documentary genre is so rich, and you can go near the frontier and have a lot of fun and creativity there. This movie, I went near to the frontier between documentary and fiction, but I stayed in the documentary territory. I had a lot of fun, and I hope the audience will feel this watching the movie.

Brian Lehrer: One of the reasons that this show focuses on the feature-length documentaries is that they don't get the media attention that, let's say, the Best Picture category does, but this year, there's a bit of a controversy in that all five nominated documentaries are from outside the US, Uganda, Ukraine, Chile, India, and yours from Tunisia. Do you have any theories why Oscar-worthy documentaries weren't made here this past year?

Kaouther Ben Hania: I have no idea. You have to do a survey among the voters. I think it's a sign of openness, curiosity about what is happening outside of the US. There was a great American movies the beginning of the race. They were surprised also, but I want to see it that way like curiosity, and people-- People who love documentaries in general are very sensitive to what is happening all around the world, so maybe it's one of the reasons.

Brian Lehrer: Listener texts, "I wonder if the director could give us a wider lens on the economic context of this family. Was joining ISIS a way out of poverty?"

Kaouther Ben Hania: Yes, we see it in the movie. There is a scene in the beginning about one of their memories played by the girls, the real daughters with the actresses trying to imagine food on empty plate, on empty dishes. Yes, it's a very poor family, and the mother is a single mother. She's divorced. She was working in Libya, coming back and forth. I think the poverty is one of the reason, but not the only reason. I think reducing the story to poverty is not giving justice to all the other small element that sent those girls into this path.

Brian Lehrer: Another text message from a listener says, "I saw this beautiful movie. It was so moving, especially the end where actual footage of the characters was shown. Thank you for showing the complexity of family dynamics as well, as the political complexity of their situation." I'll ask you about how in real life, if I understand the movie correctly, Olfa, the mom, wants Tunisia to bring her daughters who were teenagers when they joined ISIS in Libya, and her young granddaughter back home from where they're being held in Libya. Is that at all likely to happen?

Kaouther Ben Hania: Sorry. Yes, she wants this. We are advocating this, especially for the little girl, her granddaughter, because a child growing up in jail, it's not a wonderful thing. What she wants is that Tunisia can give them a fair trial in Tunisia, so we are trying to use the Oscar nomination to pressure the Tunisian government so they can-- They are starting the process of bringing them, but it's very complicated in term of bureaucracy. Yes, we hope we can have this.

Brian Lehrer: Well, I always ask the directors of these documentaries, if you win the Oscar, do you think it will help the cause in the real world?

Kaouther Ben Hania: I think so, yes. Already, I think the nomination, and being in Cannes Film Festival, everything started there in the main competition.

All those things help because, and also help the exposure of the movie. Yes, I hope so.

Brian Lehrer: Was there any controversy over accepting the film for the documentary category because you use actors in part of it?

Kaouther Ben Hania: No, because I can tell you, dozen of movies, documentary movies that use actors. There was no controversy.

Brian Lehrer: All right. I will read one more text message from a listener who reacts to the fact that none of the Oscar-nominated documentaries were made in the United States this year. The controversy over that, listener writes, "Isn't the real question why don't more of the Oscar nominations typically go to movies from one of the 200-plus countries in the world?"

On the way out, I want to play a little snippet from the film and have you set it up. It's the sisters, the two real ones and the two actors singing a pop song. How important was it to portray not just the traumatic events, but the laughter as in this scene?

Kaouther Ben Hania: The real character are very funny. I think that humor helped them a lot to cope with their very hard life. The movie is funny because they are funny, and it brings light and joy to this story. I wanted to put this in the movie. It's important.

Brian Lehrer: We leave it there with our guest, and congratulations again to Kaouther Ben Hania on your film, Four Daughters, being nominated for the Oscar for best feature-length documentary. Listeners, it's available to rent on various streaming services. Thank you for joining us. Good luck.

Kaouther Ben Hania: Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: We'll hear from the directors of the remaining three nominated films next week.

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