Boasting an impressive list of producers––including Spike Lee, Riz Ahmed, Alma Har’el, and Spike Jonze––Dina Amer’s gripping and deeply affecting directorial debut You Resemble Me dramatizes the sad and embattled life of Hasna Ait Boulahcen, a young woman who was falsely depicted as Europe’s first female suicide bomber after the 2015 Paris bombings.

The first part of the film portrays Hasna and her younger sister Mariam (played with realistic lack of inhibition by real-life sisters Lorenza and Ilonna Grimaudo) as they navigate life in in the suburbs of Paris. Moroccan immigrants, they live in a multi-racial housing complex with their overwhelmed, abusive mother and two other siblings. Despite life’s challenges and the neighborhood’s roughness, the closely bonded Hasna and Mariam manage to have fun playing and running through the streets. With its naturalistic action, dialogue and characters, the film is instantly compelling. Amer presents her story in a straightforward yet often poetic way; it’s easy to get drawn into the lives of these scrappy sisters.

During an impromptu birthday celebration for Mariam, their mother attempts to collect her daughter’s gifts to sell for cash. Hasna rebels, running away with Mariam in tow. They take the train into the city, where they sleep in a park in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower and snatch food from street vendors.

Eventually the girls are apprehended (not for the first time) by authorities and literally torn apart, relegated to separate foster homes. Like the rest of You Resemble Me, this wrenching scene is intimate and raw, the camera closing in on the girls’ agonized faces.

Things are tense in Hasna’s foster home and she runs away again, wearing a cowboy hat she somehow acquired. (Actual press photos of Ait Boulahcen included one of her in a similar hat. A fan of Westerns, her character pretends to draw guns and shoot “bad guys” at several points during the film.)

The film jumps ahead several years, showing a grown-up Hasna drinking and dancing uninhibitedly in a club, then getting beaten up for selling bad drugs and being told by another man, “Everyone knows you’re a whore.” As an adult, Hasna is played by three different women including director Amer, with the fantastic Mouna Soualem doing the heaviest lifting. The multi-actress device, which is a bit confusing at first, symbolizes the character’s fragmented self.

Hasna repeatedly blames herself for splitting up her siblings and keeps trying to contact Mariam who doesn’t return her calls. One day she is verbally attacked by several men at the shawarma place where she works and is rescued by a Muslim couple.

At her lowest point, she sees her cousin Abdelhamid (Alexandre Gonin) on TV news, depicted as a “radical Islamist” and ISIS member. Hasna later watches one of his recruitment videos, which are clearly made to lure lost souls like herself. Eventually she makes contact and they begin texting, Abdelhamid urging her to come to Syria. Wanting to be useful somewhere, she also attempts to join the French Army, but is rudely dismissed at her interview.

Hasna’s eventual transformation into a pious Muslim isn’t smooth or complete; she remains rebellious and irreverent. Juxtaposed against Abdelhamid’s lulling descriptions of the “paradise” that awaits Hasna, we see news reports of the Charlie Hebdo attacks, and later, the coordinated St. Denis/Paris attacks that included the horrific Bataclan nightclub shootings. Eventually, Hasna decides to join her cousin.

When Hasna’s real-life relatives weigh in on her life and circumstances late in the film, it makes for an emotionally powerful and devastating ending.

Though most of You Resemble Me is a fictionalized version of what led to Hasna’s “radicalization,” it’s a compelling portrait of how a broken person might become involved in something that is beyond comprehension to most of us. It’s also Amer’s attempt to set the record straight, as initial reports of Hasna as suicide bomber were later disproved. An impressive debut, the film manages to unspool a complicated narrative and tightly hold our attention throughout.

You Resemble Me opens at the Angelika Film Center on Friday, November 4.

–– Marina Zogbi