Hollywood heavyweights shine at Cannes Film Festival
From our correspondent in Cannes, Tunisia’s Kaouther Ben Hania is among the early contenders for the Palme d’Or with her haunting film « Four Daughters ». The movie tells the story of a group of teenage girls who decide to join the jihad in Syria. Meanwhile, Africa’s « Cannes moment » continues with the timely screening of Sudanese drama « Goodbye Julia ». The director spoke to 3sec about the bittersweet experience of attending the world’s premier film festival while his home country is at war.
Cannes Film Festival reached its halfway point on Sunday, with a batch of fine movies making up for the filthy weather that has thrown a wet blanket over the Riviera’s film shindig. Martin Scorsese and his fellow travellers Robert De Niro and Leonardo Di Caprio enjoyed a triumphant victory lap at the press conference for « Killers of The Flower Moon », which garnered rave reviews after its gala premiere last night. Based on a bestseller about a wave of murders among oil-rich Osage Indians in the 1920s, the movie marked a long-awaited return for Scorsese and De Niro, almost half a century after the feverish premiere of « Taxi Diver » (1976) resulted in boos and walkouts on the Croisette – as well as a Palme d’Or.
Shadow of jihad
The festival’s halfway mark is generally the point when Palme d’Or chatter begins and the early frontrunners emerge. Currently leading the pack, according to the pundits, is Jonathan Glazer’s Auschwitz-set « The Zone of Interest », a chilling look at the idyllic family life of a German officer stationed at the Nazi death camp. Others in Cannes were rooting for Kaouther Ben Hania’s « Four Daughters » (« Les Filles d’Olfa »), an experimental docu-drama based on the real story of a family ripped apart by the legacy of patriarchal oppression and the onset of jihadist militancy in post-Arab Spring Tunisia.
« Four Daughters » tackles a question that has haunted our societies for much of the past decade, exploring how two ordinary teenage girls could go from partying, flirting and entertaining a goth phase to joining the Islamic State (IS) group’s bloody jihad – leaving their mother and two younger siblings behind. Ben Hania casts the real-life mother, Olfa Hamrouni, and her two remaining daughters alongside actresses to recreate scenes from their lives together in a bold cinematic experiment that the Tunisian director pulls off with remarkable control.
