You Resemble Me

In November 2015, a wave of terrorist attacks occurred in Paris. One of them was falsely attributed to Hasna Ait Boulahcen, the first so-called female suicide terrorist of Europe. Writer and director Dina Amer, who at the time worked for Vice and wrote an incorrect story about the broken, tragic life of Hasna, wants to make up for it with this film.

In the first half of the film, we go back to Hasna’s childhood in a Parisian banlieue. With her younger sister, Miriam, she constantly flees from their home, where her violent mother prefers sleeping all day to caring for her children. Hasna and Miriam are inseparable. They jump, dance and skip through the streets of Paris in identical dresses, which Hasna stole for Miriam’s birthday. After a big fight with her mother, Hasna is kicked out and takes Miriam with her. They spend a night on the street, but in the morning they are picked up by child protection and are sent to separate foster parents. In a devastating scene, Hasna fights with all her might to not be separated from her sister.

Then the film cuts to 2015 and we get to know adult Hasna, dancing in a club under the camera’s hedonistic eye. In this more roughly composed second half, Hasna does what she can to make ends meet, including working as a prostitute and trying to get into the army. For months she sleeps at a boyfriend’s place and through a long lost cousin, she embraces the Islamic faith. Her dream to help those in pain in Syria and Palestine eventually led to her tragic end.