Outline of Story:
Two twin sisters Lotte and Anna, born in pre-war Germany (1920) are separated at the age of six when there last parent and father dies. Because the Dutch and German relatives "themselves are already at war", both the children grow up in a totally different environment, different language, -parents, -family and -friends. Lotte, although quite ill, is the luckier of the two, as she is taken in by distant family in the Netherlands, where she is lovingly nursed back to health. Anna, on the other hand, finds herself claimed by a harsh uncle and aunt to live and work on their farm, where punishing treatment makes her existence miserable.
For many years the girls try to contact each other but both families are able to intercept their letters and to make them believe that the other sister is dead.
We follow the two sisters as they mature, including the long-awaited first reunion, which is a happy moment, in Anna's elegant Countess's surroundings. But when Lotte observes German dinner guests criticizing a cursing the Jews she flees as her soon to be Husband is Jewish. The two sisters find it difficult to separate the losses of their husbands: Lotte blames Anna's siding with the Nazis as a cause of David's death. Anna defends Martin's role as one of idealism that had nothing to do with the genocide of the Jews. They part, seemingly to never meet again.
But as old women bedraggled Anna seeks out the elegant Lotte and the two come to understand their opposite opinions of what the war did to destroy their happiness. The movie ends in the two elderly Lotte and Anna spending a night in the Bush lands. Sadly Anna dies in Lotte's arms.
Two twin sisters Lotte and Anna, born in pre-war Germany (1920) are separated at the age of six when there last parent and father dies. Because the Dutch and German relatives "themselves are already at war", both the children grow up in a totally different environment, different language, -parents, -family and -friends. Lotte, although quite ill, is the luckier of the two, as she is taken in by distant family in the Netherlands, where she is lovingly nursed back to health. Anna, on the other hand, finds herself claimed by a harsh uncle and aunt to live and work on their farm, where punishing treatment makes her existence miserable.
For many years the girls try to contact each other but both families are able to intercept their letters and to make them believe that the other sister is dead.
We follow the two sisters as they mature, including the long-awaited first reunion, which is a happy moment, in Anna's elegant Countess's surroundings. But when Lotte observes German dinner guests criticizing a cursing the Jews she flees as her soon to be Husband is Jewish. The two sisters find it difficult to separate the losses of their husbands: Lotte blames Anna's siding with the Nazis as a cause of David's death. Anna defends Martin's role as one of idealism that had nothing to do with the genocide of the Jews. They part, seemingly to never meet again.
But as old women bedraggled Anna seeks out the elegant Lotte and the two come to understand their opposite opinions of what the war did to destroy their happiness. The movie ends in the two elderly Lotte and Anna spending a night in the Bush lands. Sadly Anna dies in Lotte's arms.