Focus Features Buys ‘Silent Twins’ Starring Letitia Wright and Tamara Lawrance

Focus Features has landed rights to “Silent Twins,” a thriller starring Letitia Wright and Tamara Lawrance.

Based on the book by Marjorie Wallace, the film marks the English language debut of director Agnieszka Smoczynska (“The Lure”). Andrea Seigel wrote the screenplay.

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Set in the 1970s and ’80s, the story follows June and Jennifer Gibbons (portrayed by Wright and Lawrance), twins from the only Black family in a small town in Wales. Feeling isolated from that unwelcoming community, the pair turn inward and reject communication with everyone but each other, retreating into their own fantasy world of artistic inspiration and adolescent desires. After a spree of vandalism inspired by an American boy they both idolize, the girls, now teenagers, are summarily sentenced to Broadmoor, an infamous psychiatric hospital, where they face the choice to separate and survive or die together.

Focus Features will distribute the film in the U.S., with Universal Pictures handling international distribution.

The film recently wrapped production in Poland. Wright served as a producer, along with Madant’s Klaudia Smieja-Rostworowska, Extreme Emotions’ Ewa Puszczyńska, 42’s Ben Pugh, Joshua Horsfield, Kindred Spirit’s Anita Gou and Alicia van Couvering. Executive Producers include Tamara Lawrance; 30WEST’s Katie Anderson, Jake Carter and Trevor Groth; Andrea Seigel; Charlie Morrison; and Marjorie Wallace.

“Aga is a visually stunning and fantastically sensitive filmmaker who treats the twins, so harshly judged, as ordinary girls with extraordinary imaginations,” said Focus Features President of Production and Acquisitions Kiska Higgs. “She’s created a luminous, magical world for her stars, in which they explore the themes of love, longing, identity and what it truly means to have an ‘other half.'”

The film was financed by Kindred Spirit and co-financed by the Polish Film Institute, Moderator Inwestycje and Cofiloisir. 30West arranged the financing and represented the U.S. rights.

Simon Goldberg and Razwana Akram at SMB at SMB, Brian Kilb at Eisner and Tomasz Przybecki negotiated the deal with Focus Features.

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