Nearly an hour into Kaouther Ben Hania’s Four Daughters, one of the actors hired to perform in the film’s reenactment with Olfa Hamrouni and her two youngest daughters, Eya and Tayssir Chikhaoui, calls for the cameras to stop rolling and asks for a private conversation with Hania about the scene. Eya expresses her frustration to the camera. Why should he be worried about the scene and how it will affect her when she’s already processed these moments with mental health professionals? She has even engaged in this type of role play as part of her therapy.

This brief scene gets to the heart of the unique cinematic experience that is Hania’s Four Daughters. Much like the documentaries of Robert Greene, Hania uses interview, conversation, recreation, and interactions between the actors and the participants as a form of cinematic therapy for Olfa and her two daughters as they explore the disappearance of the family’s oldest two daughters/sisters, Ghofrane and Rahma. Actors are brought to fill in for the missing daughters, to play the roles of various men enforcing the rigid patriarchal systems of oppression these women and girls faced, and to play Olfa herself when the scenes’ emotions become too intense to bear. The playfulness of acting exercises (there are wonderfully warm and tender sequences between Eya, Tayssir, and the two actresses portraying their sisters) and the technical craft of rehearsal creates an open space for tremendous emotional release and revelation.

Even amid verité shots of rehearsal and conversation, off-the-cuff conversations and interviews, Hania and her cinematographer, Farouk Laaridh, capture stunning images, wrapped in the lush blue-green color palette of the film’s interiors. The use of mirrors throughout provides strong thematic resonances, especially in an early sequence showing Hend Sabry, the actress portraying Olfa, looking into a mirror and rehearsing her “character’s” mannerisms. The film holds a mirror up to Olfa, exploring her relationship with all her children, and in coming to understand and portray her during this series of reenactments, Hend becomes the individual most able to provide that reflection.

In fact, this reflection is part of what makes Four Daughters so compelling. The relationship between Olfa and her children is marked by patterns of generational abuse under patriarchal systems and the ways survivors seek escape from their torment. By portraying Olfa in the reenactments, Hend is able to gently challenge the mother when the film explores how Olfa’s own religious fundamentalism has disastrous consequences in her daughters’ lives. And when the standard teenage methods of rebellion didn’t work, the daughters chose an even more extreme form of fundamentalism to gain power within their family system, leading to tragedy.

Four Daughters may be a difficult and heartbreaking watch, but this journey into healing and understanding is so beautiful and deeply moving.