Notes From The Program Director | Week of January 26th, 2024

Second, I must take a moment to say a few words about Four Daughters. In addition to the Oscar nomination, it was also nominated for a Palme d'Or and it won the Golden Eye prize (best documentary) at Cannes.  It's an absolutely brilliant and profoundly moving film, not to mention one of the most unique I've seen in a while. It tells the story of a Tunisian family, a mother and her four daughters, two of whom are "lost" for reasons that are not explained until near the end of the film (and I'd encourage everyone to avoid spoilers). The filmmaker, Kaouther Ben Hania, approaches the story by way of interviews with the mother and the two remaining daughters, but, with the permission of the family, she also invites professional actresses into the home to act out the parts of the missing daughters. The family, with the actresses, are thus able to tell their story through role play. 

The result is electrifying. Even the initial presence of the actresses, when they arrive at the home to play the parts of the missing sisters, overwhelms the remaining family with emotion. The depth of their loss and grief plays out on their faces as they look earnestly at the actresses, as if searching for some clue about their lost sisters. 

From there, the story, as it unfolds over the course of the film, only gains emotional depth, and it ultimately becomes not only a reflection of family and gender dynamics in the rigidly patriarchal society the women live in, but also a meditation on cinema itself, the ways in which a fiction -- an actress playing a role -- can get at truth that might not be otherwise accessible. The family is ultimately able to process what happened to them and to process who they are by way of the medium of the camera and of art of acting. 

It is, ultimately, a phenomenal, complex film that often overwhelmed me with emotion. I could not be happier it got an Oscar nomination.  

Finally, on a lighter note, we have the totally irresistible The Great Muppet Caperplaying this week on Saturday, January 27, 1:30 pm and Sunday, January 28, 10:00 am as our Kid Pickford selection. May the enduring delight of the Muppets never wane. 

See you at the movies, friends! 

Melissa