DUBAI/EXCLUSIVE: Habib Attia is producing documentary about a mother fighting to get her two teenage daughters back from Libya.

Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania is developing a new documentary, Mercy And Forgiveness (working title), about a mother fighting to get her two teenage daughters back from Libya, where they are holed up in jail after joining their ISIS militant boyfriends.

Ben Hania’s long-time collaborator Habib Attia of Tunis-based Cinetelefilms is producing the film.

“The mother is desperate to get them back but Tunisia would be happy if they died over there,” said Ben Hania. “I want to make a film about this mother and her fight to get them back. She is a poor but intelligent women who speaks with great reason about what has befallen her and her family.”

Ben Hania’s last work Zaineb Hates The Snow, following a girl from childhood to adolescence after she is uprooted from her native Tunisia to begin a new life in Canada shortly after her father’s death, is screening in the Arabian Nights section at DIFF after an award-winning festival run this year.

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