Twin Sisters (2013 film)

Last updated
Twin Sisters
Twin Sisters (2013 film) poster.jpg
Film poster
Norwegian Tvillingsøstrene
Directed byMona Friis Bertheussen
Produced byMona Friis Bertheussen
StarringMia Hansen
Alexandra Hauglum
Wenche Hauglum
Sigmund Hauglum
Angela Hansen
Andy Hansen
CinematographyHallgrim Haug
Edited byErik Andersson
Mona Friis Bertheussen [1]
Production
company
Moment Film [1]
Release date
  • November 21, 2013 (2013-11-21)(IDFA) [2]
Running time
58 minutes
CountryNorway
LanguagesEnglish
Norwegian

Twin Sisters is a 2013 documentary film directed by Mona Friis Bertheussen and produced by Moment Film. The film won the Audience Award at the 2013 International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam. [3] Twin Sisters won ten other awards and has been broadcast by more than 30 television channels, reaching millions worldwide.

Contents

Synopsis

The movie starts in 2003 when someone finds two young babies in a cardboard box in a southern Chinese village. This person eventually takes them to an orphanage in Changsha, Hunan Province,China, [4] and two families individually adopted them. One of them (Alexandra Hauglum) went to live in the small village of Freskvik, Norway, surrounded by high mountains and deep fjords. The other sister (Mia Hansen) went to Sacramento, California, a much bigger city in northern California. The adoptive parents had no idea their new daughter had a twin, but through a series of inexplicable incidents, the girls were back together.

The film tells the story of the twin sisters until they reunited for the second time in person, which happened when they were eight years old, at Alexandra's home in Norway.

Production and filming

The film took approximately four years to make. The director Mona Friis Bertheussen and cinematographer Hallgrim Haug [5] travelled back and forth between Fresvik and Sacramento to document the contrasts and similarities between the girls’ lives. The visits led up to the girls’ first reunion in Norway, which became the highlight of the documentary.

The film received its major funding from the Norwegian Film Institute, Creative Europe, the Norwegian television channel TV2, and Swedish television channel SVT. The film also received funding from Fond for Lyd og Bilde, Fritt Ord, Arts Council Norway and Vest Norsk Filmsenter. It was pitched at the 2010 Sheffield Doc/Fest MeetMarket.

Reception

In 2014, Norway's TV2 reported that the film was its most watched documentary in more than four years. [6] The New York Times reporting that "Everything about the Norwegian film 'Twin Sisters' seems too good to be true". [7] Mia and Alexandra were invited to be interviewed on the popular Scandinavian talk show, Skavlan.

In the United States, acclaim for the film came through the PBS series Independent Lens which began airing Twin Sisters in October 2014. [8]

Awards

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam</span> Film festival

The International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) is the world's largest documentary film festival held annually since 1988 in Amsterdam, Netherlands.

Sex Slaves is a 2005 documentary film by Ric Esther Bienstock that was produced in association with CBC, Frontline (PBS), Channel 4 and Canal D.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ITVS</span>

ITVS is a service in the United States which funds and presents documentaries on public television through distribution by PBS and American Public Television, new media projects on the Internet, and the weekly series Independent Lens on PBS. Aside from Independent Lens, ITVS funded and produced films for more than 40 television hours per year on the PBS series POV, Frontline, American Masters and American Experience. Some ITVS programs are produced along with organizations like Latino Public Broadcasting and KQED.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fresvik</span> Village in Western Norway, Norway

Fresvik is a village in the municipality of Vik in Vestland county, Norway. It is located on the southern shore of the Sognefjorden, just west of where the Aurlandsfjorden joins the Sognefjorden. Fresvik sits about 13 kilometres (8.1 mi) south of Leikanger-Hermansverk, about 20 kilometres (12 mi) east of the municipal center of Vikøyri, and about 15 kilometres (9.3 mi) southeast of the village of Feios. The population (2001) of Fresvik is approximately 275.

Thomas Furneaux Lennon is a documentary filmmaker. He was born in Washington, D.C., graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy in 1968 and Yale University in 1973.

François Verster is an independent South African film director and documentary maker.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Leanne Pooley</span> New Zealand-Canadian filmmaker

Leanne Pooley ONZM is a Canadian filmmaker based in Auckland, New Zealand. Pooley was born and raised in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, she immigrated to New Zealand in the mid-1980s and began working in the New Zealand television and film industry before moving to England where she worked for many of the world's top broadcasters. She returned to New Zealand in 1997 and started the production company Spacific Films. Her career spans more than 25 years and she has won numerous international awards. Leanne Pooley was made a New Zealand Arts Laureate in 2011 and an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit in the New Year's Honours List 2017. She is a member of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

The animated documentary is a moving image form that combines animation and documentary. This form should not be confused with documentaries about movie and TV animation history that feature excerpts.

<i>Sisters in Law</i> (film) 2005 Cameroonian film

Sisters in Law is a 2005 Cameroonian documentary film by Florence Ayisi and Kim Longinotto, portraying aspects of women's lives and work within the judicial system in western Cameroon. Following four separate cases, the film focuses on state prosecutor Vera Ngassa and judge Beatrice Ntuba as they attempt to bring justice for victims of gender violence.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Northern Light Productions</span> Documentary media production company

Northern Light Productions is a documentary film and museum media production company based in Boston, MA. Founded in 1982 by independent filmmaker Bestor Cram, the company is one of New England's premiere production organizations, creating a variety of work for museums, visitor centers, educational institutions, and television broadcast worldwide.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Women Make Movies</span>

Women Make Movies is a non-profit feminist media arts organization based in New York City. Founded by Ariel Dougherty and Sheila Paige with Dolores Bargowski, WMM was first a feminist production collective that emerged from city-wide Women's Liberation meetings in September 1969. They produced four films by 1973. Dougherty and Paige incorporated the organization in March 1972 as a community based workshop to teach film to everyday women. A distribution service was also begun as an earned income program. In the mid-1970s a membership was created that screened and distributed members' work. In the early 1980s focus shifted to concentrate on distribution of independent films by and about women. WMM also provides production assistance to women filmmakers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Leonard Retel Helmrich</span> Dutch cinematographer and film director (1959–2023)

Leonard Retel Helmrich was a Dutch cinematographer and film director. Born in Tilburg, he lived in Amsterdam since 1982. He received the highest honors for international documentaries at the Sundance Festival and was the first two-time International Documentary winner at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA). On June 5, 2018, he was rewarded by the Dutch King Willem-Alexander with the title Knight in the Order of the Netherlands Lion.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lixin Fan</span> Chinese-born Canadian documentary film director

Lixin Fan is a Montreal, Quebec, Canada-based documentary film director with the Canadian production company EyeSteelFilm and previously a producer/journalist at China's state broadcaster CCTV.

<i>Love Inventory</i> 2000 Israeli documentary by David Fisher

Love Inventory aka Reshimat Ahava is a 2000 Israeli documentary film, written and directed by David Fisher and produced by Yahaly Gat and David Fisher. This is the First film in the family trilogy created by director David Fisher followed by Mostar Round-Trip (2011) and Six Million and One (2011).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eilona Ariel</span> Israeli filmmaker

Eilona (Elona) Ariel is a documentary filmmaker.

<i>Superjews</i> 2013 Dutch film

Superjews is a 2013 documentary film produced and directed by independent Israeli-Dutch filmmaker Nirit Peled.

Rafea: Solar Mama is an 2012 American documentary film, directed by Jehane Noujaim and Mona Eldaief. It follows Rafea, an illiterate Jordanian Bedouin as she follows her aspirations of lighting up her village by harnessing the power of solar energy by enrolling in the Barefoot College solar program in India.

<i>Saving Mes Aynak</i> 2014 American film

Saving Mes Aynak is a 2014 independent documentary film, directed, produced, shot and edited by Brent E. Huffman. It was produced out of Kartemquin Films, the landmark Chicago-based documentary house, along with producer Zak Piper.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Brent E. Huffman</span> American film director

Brent Edward Huffman is an American director, writer, and cinematographer of documentaries and television programs, including Saving Mes Aynak (2015). His work has been featured on Netflix, Discovery Channel, The National Geographic Channel, VICE, NBC, CNN, PBS, Time, The New York Times, Al Jazeera America and Al Jazeera English and premiered at International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA), and many other U.S. and international film festivals. He is also a professor at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University where he teaches documentary production and theory.

Jennifer Kroot is an American filmmaker whose films include the documentaries It Came From Kuchar (2009) and To Be Takei (2014).

References

  1. 1 2 "Twin Sisters", IDFA (International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam) Archived 2016-01-01 at the Wayback Machine
  2. "Idfa program guide 2013". Issuu. Retrieved 12 May 2020.
  3. Bertheussen, Mona Friis. "Tvillingsøstrene". IMDB, Moment Films.
  4. "From California to Norway, twins have an unmistakable bond : Documentary chronicles the unlikely story of 11-year-old adopted girls, who were separated by the system in China.", The Sacramento Bee newspaper, October 15, 2014
  5. HAL Films website
  6. "«Tvillingsøstrene» Mye tyder på at den TV 2-sendte dokumentaren om de to biologiske tvillingjentene som bor på hver sin kant av kloden kan bli den mest sette norske filmen noensinne", TV2 Norway, November 20, 2014 (Norwegian)
  7. Hale, Mike, "Twins, Raised in Different Worlds : ‘Twin Sisters’ From China Stay in Touch", The New York Times, October 19, 2014
  8. "Twin Sisters", PBS Independent Lens website.
  9. Moment Film website