Kari Klo, in front, and May-Elin Storsletten in The Gullspång Miracle (Ballad Film)

Debut feature director Maria Fredriksson got more than she bargained for in this onscreen family squabble, and audiences will too.  

Perhaps a more appropriate title for her documentary would be The Gullspång Mystery. Along the way, viewers will develop a long list of questions, many of which will remain unanswered. Perhaps that’s part of the allure. It remains compelling, involving, and illuminating without a tidy sense of closure. It’s hard to imagine one ironclad interpretation regarding this particular family tree. 

Fredriksson became involved in this project when she was contacted by three sisters. Through happenstance in a real estate office, two 70ish siblings, May and Kari, found themselves sitting across from a woman who, to them at least, looked like the spitting image of their older, and deceased, sister Lita. They believed they had discovered their long-lost sister. According to the family’s oral history, Lita had a twin who was given away in 1941 during the German occupation of Norway so as to prevent the twins from falling under the experimental scrutiny of the Nazis. Sure enough, May, Kari, and the no-nonsense 80-year-old Olaug take a DNA blood test that confirms they are half-sisters—Olaug has a different mother. 

The film makes no bones to hide the presence of Fredriksson. From the beginning, she directs the two sisters, take after take, in a sequence describing how they found an apartment for May in the small Swedish town of Gullspång, which is 1,000 kilometers from where they grew up in northern Norway. (The duo are willing participants in the reenactment.) And in what ensues, Fredriksson becomes caught in the middle, both as a referee for the family as well as a filmmaker.  

Newcomer Olaug’s entry into the family is not unlike when in-laws meet for the first time. There is the expected awkwardness, but, in this case, Olaug is taken aback: No one in her now newly extended family shares her values. Apparently, genetics go only so far. She grew up middle-class. Her siblings (which number five, besides May and Kari) were raised on a farm. The most noticeable difference is the contrast between Olaug, an areligious former lieutenant, and this fervently devout Christian family, who pray before meals. Olaug also listens to Italian opera, while Kari sings along to Christian pop.

Presumably many of the family’s conversations were left private and off screen because the relationship between Olaug and especially May takes a frosty turn fairly quickly. Although there is no coming out moment, presumably Olaug is gay, if her rainbow-colored feather duster is any indication. Nevertheless, Kari, the optimist, serves as a goodwill ambassador between the outnumbered Olaug and the rest of the kindred. Yet perhaps because she’s outflanked, Olaug becomes crankier, telephoning the director of her displeasure and desire to quit the film all together. 

Bonds are further strained when Olaug takes the initiative to investigate the cause of the death of her twin. The family had accepted the explanation from authorities that Lita had died of suicide in 1988, but when Olaug receives the police report, suicide is not definitively named as the cause of death. Though there were pill bottles found near Lita’s body, there were no traces of drugs in her blood system, to name one inconsistency. So, what starts out as an examination of the meaning of family turns into a true crime documentary—depending on how viewers weigh the testimonies and evidence presented. Regardless, it’s an intriguing puzzle that may have no answer(s).

The movie leads viewers step-by-step into the unfolding familial feud. Appropriately, The Gullspång Miracle won the Best Editing award at the recent Tribeca Festival, where it had its world premiere.