14/09/2026 - Hanaël El Yousfi delivers a bold and vibrant, feminist debut feature film about emancipation and the deceptive, ossified boundaries of communitarianism

"As Aristotle, says, our happiness depends on us alone. It’s a responsibility, a form of freedom, to become who we are, even in turbulent times." This undergraduate lecture attended by the protagonist of Hanaël El Yousfi’s debut feature film, The Daughters of Abraham - which screened in the Discovery section of the 51st Toronto International Film Festival - neatly encapsulates the focus of this film which is by no means a philosophy treatise (Aristotle doesn’t pay the rent). In fact, the young French filmmaker of Moroccan origin dives headlong into fiercely energetic realism, following young women firmly rooted in our era and central to the heated contemporary issue of communities being divided (despite having far more in common than some might think) and delivering a promising debut which has already earned her an Audience Award, and her actresses a special mention, at the Angoulême Francophone Film Festival.

"Jews, Muslims — for us, it’s never been an issue, we’re above religions." This declaration of friendship, delivered during the Marseille-based wedding of Myriam Achour’s brother (the former played by Mélissa Guers), is perfectly in line with the life of this young philosophy student who’s very close to Eva Benkemoun (Ava Baya) — she even loved Eva’s brother (a relationship which ended badly) two years previously. But this erasure of borders between two groups who share the same sense of family and celebration, the same culinary tastes and the same origins on the southern shores of the Mediterranean basin, does have its limits — limits which Myriam first encounters by chance thanks to her cross-community first name, which opens all kinds of doors, and then again, more violently, when stolen images of her resurface (in the form of a sex tape)…

Tackling an extremely delicate subject through the prism of private life and feminism, while cleverly keeping current incendiary geopolitical upheavals at bay, the film advances briskly, injecting just the right levels of dynamism (as per the punchy opening scene, Kechiche -style sequences which allows the characters to live, and the vivid depiction of the Phocaean city’s informal atmosphere, for example) to portray a tumultuous generation of young people who are restrained by the shackles of the past, the patriarchy ("can’t you see how you’ve been dancing for a while now?") which has been internalised by mothers preoccupied with family cohesion, and a kind of communitarianism ("before, he was seeing a whore, not a girl from our community") which will do anything to save face. It’s an effervescent deep dive into reality and its disorders, carried by an excellent group of young actresses (with Gabrielle Cohen rounding off the trio) and revealing a filmmaker who still shows room for improvement, but who’s nonetheless endowed with a promising and innate sense of rhythm, space and movement.

The Daughters of Abraham was produced by CG Cinéma in co-production with France 2 Cinéma. Les Films du Losange are handling international sales (with the film’s release in France due for 30 December).

(Translated from French)