Twin Sisters (2002 film)
Twin Sisters (Dutch: De Tweeling) is a 2002 Dutch film, directed by Ben Sombogaart, based on the novel The Twins by Tessa de Loo, with a screenplay by Dutch actress and writer Marieke van der Pol.
| Twin Sisters | |
|---|---|
 Film poster | |
| Directed by | Ben Sombogaart |
| Produced by | Hanneke Niens Anton Smit Madelon Veldhuizen |
| Written by | Tessa de Loo Marieke van der Pol |
| Starring | Thekla Reuten, Nadja Uhl, Ellen Vogel, Gudrun Okras |
| Music by | Fons Merkies |
| Distributed by | Miramax Films |
Release date |
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| Country | Netherlands |
| Language | Dutch, German |
| Box office | $5,145,363 [1] |
Plot
The film tells the story of twin German sisters Lotte (Thekla Reuten) and Anna (Nadja Uhl), who are separated when they are six. After the deaths of their parents, they are "divided" between quarreling distant relatives, one being raised in the Netherlands and the other in Germany. Lotte grows up in a loving middle-class intellectual family in Amsterdam, and Anna is raised in virtual servitude by a poor Catholic peasant family in a backward area.
The two girls seek to keep in contact, but Anna's family lacks Lotte's address, and Lotte's new family fails to mail her letters for fear that the brutal farmers will claim her, as well. The cataclysmic events of World War II sweep them even further apart. Lotte falls in love with a young Jewish man who is eventually caught by the Nazis and sent to his death. Anna falls in love and marries a young Wehrmacht soldier who joins the Waffen SS and is killed in the last days of the war. Although the girls find each other just before the outbreak of the war, Anna's attempt to reunite with Lotte in its aftermath is thwarted by Lotte's bitter discovery that Anna's husband had been part of the apparatus that murdered her fiancé.
Only in her old age, when they meet again at a spa, does Lotte reconcile herself to their divergent lives and reclaim the tender sibling feeling of her childhood. The two girls/women are each played by three different actors from the Netherlands and Germany.
Cast
- Ellen Vogel - Lotte senior
- Gudrun Okras - Anna senior
- Thekla Reuten - Jonge Lotte
- Nadja Uhl - Jonge Anna
- Julia Koopmans - Kleine Lotte
- Sina Richardt - Kleine Anna
- Betty Schuurman - Moeder Rockanje
- Jaap Spijkers - Vader Rockanje
Reception
In Israel, some critics objected to the film as "creating a moral equation between the killers and their victims". Still, it was shown successfully for several months in cinemas all over Israel. As the Jewish Chronicle was later to remark,
A thought-provoking film, raises big questions about responsibility for the Holocaust and what ordinary individuals do when faced with extraordinary evil.
Miramax Films had also acquired the United States distribution rights to Twin Sisters and the film was given a limited US theatrical release in 2005.
The film was a 76th Academy Awards nominee for Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film of 2003.
Box office
The film received commercial release on May 6, 2005, and grossed $1,207 in the opening weekend in one theater (US). It went on to gross $1,563 domestically (US) and $5,143,800 in the foreign markets for a worldwide total of $5,145,363.[1]