Four Daughters is a riveting film that takes an unabashedly honest look at what it means to be a woman in a today’s complex world. Although the film comes from the Arab world it touches on issues that are universal. From Academy Award-nominee Kaouther Ben-Haia, Four Daughters won the Golden Eye, Cannes Film Festival’s Best Documentary Award and was the only Arab film in competition. Four Daughters is not your typical documentary. Director Ben Hania approached it as a film-within-a-film, part documentary, with the subjects playing themselves, and partly dramatic, with actors doubling as the real persons and sometimes appearing in the same scenes together. At times, the director herself was an on-camera participant. It may sound confusing, but under Ben Hania’s deft direction, seamless editing and expert and imaginative cinematography, the film is an absorbing treatise on   surrounding the deep psychological scars caused by pain of marital and sexual abuse and their generational curse, societal subjugation of women and the insidious intrusion of religious and political fanaticism. These are subjects that are literally torn from today’s headlines.  Four Daughters is a must-see film, especially in light of current events. Much credit is to be given to the production team for creating a vivid and engrossing cinematic portrait.  In spite of its complex structure, the film flows seamless from beginning to end. It envelops you in its narrative arc before it literally rips your heart out with its conclusion. A special shout-out should be given to the Subtitles creator, Jacqui Chappel. Usually a stumbling block for American filmgoers, she made the titles easy to read and high enough in the screen aspect that they could be read without losing sight of the action. At the start of the film, we meet Olfa Hamrouni and her two teen-aged daughters Eya and Tayssir Chikhaoui, who live in Tunisia. Olfa, the mother, originally likens her role in the film to that of Rose, who tells the story of her survival in Titanic. She quickly learns as shooting begins, that she may be emotionally in for just as treacherous and fateful a ride. Director Ben Hania is preparing mother and daughters to participate in a new documentary she is shooting. A decade ago, their story had reverberated around the world. When Eya and Tayssir were just eight and nine years old, Olfa’s two eldest daughters, Rahma and Ghofrane disappeared. It turns out they had run off with the leader of a jihadist terror group and were swept away to a training camp in Libya with the goal of mounting terror attacks in Syria. The psychological trauma left in the wake of their disappearance is just one flash point in the tumultuous lives of the mother and daughter who were left behind. Their trauma is the subject of director Ben Hania’s film. Mother and daughters are introduced to the actresses who will portray the missing elder daughters. An actress has also been hired to play Olfa as the director predicts, wisely, that it may prove difficult for Olfa to face the cameras as scenes from her life are reenacted. Her prediction proves correct as Olfa immediately breaks down in tears at the sight of the two actresses who are dead ringers for her missing daughters. It doesn’t take much prompting from the director to get the family, particularly the young daughters, to act out their emotions in real time before the cameras. There are moments when they forget that they are acting in a movie.  In one particularly emotional scene, daughter Rahma, confronts her stepfather, who is playing his own character. She tells him (while incidentally holding a butcher knife in her hand) of the emotional trauma she suffered, caused by his frequent abuse. Her penetrating words eventually causes him to yell ‘Cut,’ as he quickly exits the shoot in a huff. Four Daughters isn’t all gloom and doom. There are moments of joy and scenes of heart-warming bonding. There’s a real sense of sisterhood that spans the generational gap.  The film also conveys the dawning awareness that the sins and sorrows of past generations are often visited upon the offspring, even among parents with the best intentions. “We always pass on the education that we receive from our mothers to our daughters,” director Ben Hania wisely counsels Olfa on camera, “until a generation comes along that breaks the chain. “Your daughters (young Eya and Tayssir), they are that generation.” Four Daughters hits all of the right emotional marks, while revealing some harsh truths. In the end, the very act of shooting the film was healing to Olfa and her two young daughters. It helped them to exorcise many of the ghosts of the past and come to grips with their mistakes. It also revealed the uncertainty of the future. The film premieres in select theaters around the country beginning Friday, Oct. 27 and will wend its way to theatres around the country in November. From Kino Lorber pictures. For more, visit chicagofilmfestival.com.