The indie series that shows the unbreakable bonds between siblings

BarcelonaShared trauma can create unbreakable bonds. This is what the series shows. Hal & Harper, a fiction of marked character indie –presented at the Sundance Film Festival– follows a brother and sister who have established a relationship of total dependency following the death of their mother when they were children. Hal & Harper, which premieres this Monday on Movistar Plus+, is created, starring, and directed by Cooper Raiff and won an award at the recent Series Mania festival, which recognized Lili Reinhart as Best Actress.

One of the series' unique features is that Cooper Raiff and Lili Reinhart, the Hal and Harper of the title, also play the childhood versions of the characters from the moment their mother dies. The father's inability to handle raising the children forces the children to rely on each other and find their own way. Throughout the series, scenes from the past are interspersed with present-day moments that show that neither the siblings nor their father are completely at peace with themselves. Mark Ruffalo, the most recognizable face in the cast, plays the protagonists' father, a man burdened by the guilt of not having been able to rise to the occasion during difficult times and who lives with the panic of the possibility of also failing his current partner and the child they are unborn.

A series to heal wounds

"Harper is a flawed woman you can't help but relate to, and I think that's beautiful. She's coming to terms with the fact that she practically raised her little brother, and that pressure caused her to grow up very quickly. This has had an impact on her, her adult life, and her romantic relationships," she explained. The actress has been working in television for years, but until now her career has been linked to more commercial products, such as the teen series Riverdale, which renewed the imaginary of the comic book saga Archive.

Raiff has produced Hal & Harper independently, that is, on their own and without having a large streaming platform or studio behind them to support them. "The decision to produce it independently wasn't because I was worried about ownership of the product, but because I wanted the series to be made the right way. And I didn't know if it would develop the right way if it wasn't done independently," Raiff argued. In fact, being an independent production, the series was able to continue developing during the 2023 writers' and actors' strike.

The fiction consists of a first season of 8 episodes, which will all premiere at once on Movistar Plus +, but the actor and creator said at the festival that he had. Raiff explained that his greatest aspiration is that when viewers watch the episodes they experience the same feeling of healing that the main character family experiences.