Doc - Twice Upon a Womb
Documentary Feature
Title: Twice Upon a Womb
TRT: WIP 00:06:05
Project Status: In Production
Logline
“Twice Upon a Womb” is an intimate, imaginative portrait of a mother reclaiming her family’s origin story of a traumatic IVF experience into a story of resilience, repair, humor and love.
Synopsis
Twice Upon a Womb is a feature documentary that begins as an intimate family story and expands into a larger examination of reproduction, bodily autonomy, and consent. At its center is Lara Sfire, a single mother of twins trying to tell her young children the truth about how they came into the world. What began as a hopeful IVF journey became a profound violation of choice, and now—years later—her sons are old enough to begin asking questions.
Using the framework of a fairytale created for her children, Lara attempts something both simple and radical: telling the truth without passing down the trauma. The film blends humorous and chaotic vérité footage of daily life with interviews, archival material, and stylized fairytale-inspired sequences that express the emotional realities that cannot be captured observationally.
As Lara reconstructs her family’s origin story, the film navigates the tension between protection and honesty, the promises of reproductive technology and the vulnerability of patients within unequal medical systems, and the messy, creative process of healing. Central to that healing is the creation of the “Womb Room,” an immersive installation that transforms pain into imagination and connection.
Rather than functioning solely as an exposé about IVF misconduct, the film becomes a portrait of resilience, motherhood, humor, and the possibility of building a hopeful future through truth.
Additional Project Information
This sample represents the observational foundation of “Twice Upon a Womb” rather than its complete formal design. Reviewers should look for the project’s emotional and narrative base: present-day vérité scenes grounded in family life, alongside early strategies for expressing memory, rupture, and embodied experience. The sample demonstrates the film’s emotional calibration: tenderness and humor in tension with moments of disruption. It introduces the central question of the feature: how truth is negotiated inside a family when the origin story itself is contested, painful, and still unfolding.
Structurally, this excerpt functions as an Act I of the intended film, focusing on the inciting incident rather than the full arc to come. What is largely absent is the fairytale-inspired, fantastical visual language that will ultimately shape the film’s tone and reenactments. These elements are still in development and will be created later in the process.
The finished film will shift its emphasis away from rupture and toward healing, adaptation, and forward motion as a family. Because this is a documentary and the story continues to evolve, the final structure remains responsive to lived experience. This sample is representative of the film’s emotional stakes, hybrid approach, and grounding in present-tense family life.
Team
Director: Lara Sfire. Producer: Theresa Loong
Financials
Budget $350k. Received: $40k. Applying to grants.
Seeking
production & post production funds, and/or a production company.
Rights Available
all rights available
Contact
Lara Sfire
sfirelara@gmail.com
313-530-4009