Twin Sisters

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. Twin Sisters went on to win ten other awards and has been broadcast by more than thirty television channels reaching millions of people worldwide. Synopsis In 2003, two baby girls were found in a cardboard box in a southern Chinese village. They were taken to an orphanage in Changsha, Hunan Province, China and were individually adopted by two families. 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 drawn back together. The film tells the story of the twin sisters up to the time when they were reunited for the second time in person. This happened when they were 8 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 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.