The Morgue Twins
Director: Rebecca Blandón
United States, 2025, 16 min
Shooting Format:Digital 4K
Festival Year:2026
Category:Documentary Short
Email:rab670@nyu.edu
Synopsis
In the twilight of their lives, retired identical twin morgue technicians, Marvin and Melvin Morgan - named after a funeral home - reflect on a 20 year career in New York City’s death care industry while contemplating their own mortality.
About the director
Rebecca Blandón is a decorated Nicaraguan-American documentary filmmaker and visual journalist born and bred in the Bronx, now living in Brooklyn. She shoots, produces, and edits stories that make the invisible visible.
You can learn more about her work here: https://www.rblandon.me/
Blandón’s work honors compassion, integrity, and beauty. Her films often explore the unique yet universal existential connections we share with impermanence, belonging, identity, and freedom.
Her independent films have screened at festivals, been exhibited at museums, and been sponsored by The Bronx Documentary Center, The Jacob Burns Film Center, Rooftop Films and the New York State Council on the Arts. She is a proud member of Brown Girls Doc Mafia, The Video Consortium, BIPOC Doc Editors, and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists. Blandón received her Bachelor’s in Neuroscience from Brown University and her Master’s in Journalism from NYU.
She currently works as a video editor at The New York Times and has previously worked as a producer, editor, and multimedia journalist at organizations like PBS, Frontline, and The Boston Globe.
Filmmaker's note
As a native New Yorker, I take pride in making films about the communities that we often overlook and take for granted. Through my work, I celebrate and honor the wisdom and achievements of the city's unsung heroes. Mortuary Technicians who work for the city and at local hospitals deserve our empathy and appreciation for the difficult, essential, and thankless work they do each day at their own risk.
I shot and edited this film as a one-woman band as I usually do across my independent shorts. This piece was a natural progression for me as it aligned with my own curiosity and respect for death care workers and fellow New Yorkers.
I would love to screen this film at a cemetery and invite the twins, their family, and peers to attend as they are very excited to share their story.
This film was a Rooftop Filmmakers Fund grantee and a New York State Council on the Arts grantee. An earlier roughcut was also screened at a Shorts-In-Progress session at Camden’s International Film Festival.