Oscar-Nominated ‘Four Daughters’ Wins Best Documentary At César Awards; Director Kaouther Ben Hania Speaks Out Against “Massacre” Of Gaza’s Children

Kaouther Ben Hania’s Oscar-nominated Four Daughters (Les Filles d’Olfa) won Best Documentary at the César Awards, France’s equivalent of the Academy Awards.

The ceremony, which crowned Anatomy of a Fall as Best Film, took place Friday night at the Olympia Theater in Paris. The win for Four Daughters comes in the midst of final Oscar voting, which runs until 5 p.m. PT on Tuesday.

As she accepted the award, Tunisian-born Ben Hania turned her attention to the situation in Gaza, which Israel invaded after the October 7 Hamas terror attack on Israel that killed an estimated 1,200 men, women and children and in which Hamas seized more than 240 hostages (roughly a quarter of the hostages are believed dead). The Ministry of Health in Gaza says more than 10,000 Palestinian children have been killed since the start of Israel’s bombing and ground campaign in Gaza.

“Today, saying ‘Stop killing children’ is becoming a radical demand,” Ben Hania said from the stage. “It’s completely mind-blowing… We are not going to be silent; we are not going to be intimidated. The massacre must stop. We have to use our authority because what’s happening there is so horrible, horrible. No one can say, ‘I didn’t know.’ This is the first massacre on live stream, live on our telephones. We know it. And it has to stop.”

Four Daughters tells the story of Olfa Hamrouni, a working-class Tunisian woman who raised four girls as a single mother. After the Arab Spring rocked Tunisia, the two eldest girls rebelled against their mother’s strict rules by embracing something far more extreme – the radical Islamist dictates of ISIS. Rahma and Ghofrane, just teenagers, fled to Libya where they were promptly married off to ISIS militants.

In the film, Ben Hania employs actors to portray the missing daughters in recreations, as well as Hind Sabri, a star of Arab cinema, to portray Olfa. Four Daughters premiered in competition at the Cannes Film Festival last May, where it shared the L’Oeil d’or prize for the festival’s best documentary with The Mother of All Lies (directed by Asmae El Moudir).

The documentary faced stiff competition for the César Award, going up against four other contenders including On the Adamant, directed by Nicolas Philibert. That film won the Golden Bear at last year’s Berlin Film Festival.

Four Daughters is produced by Tanit Films in collaboration with Cinetelefilms and Twenty Twenty, and co-produced with Red Sea Film Festival Foundation, ZDF/Arte, and Jour2Fête.

After the César Awards win, the Red Sea Film Festival sent a congratulatory Tweet on X/Twitter, noting “The Red Sea Film Foundation is proud to have supported this exceptional project through the #RedSeaFund.”

Four Daughters, released in the U.S. by Kino Lorber, has made over $100,000 at the domestic box office, more than any other of the Oscar-nominated feature documentaries this year, which include 20 Days in Mariupol, The Eternal Memory, Bobi Wine: The People’s President, and To Kill a Tiger.