A new MOW with an international cast and director has begun shooting in and around Halifax. The Memory Keeper’s Daughter, an adaptation of the Kim Edwards bestseller, went to camera on Nov. 18 for a 20-day shoot, budgeted at $5.2 million.

The Lifetime Network movie is being produced by Jaffe/Braunstein Films and Nova Scotia production company Magic Rock. It stars Dermot Mulroney (The Family Stone), Gretchen Mol (The Notorious Bettie Page) and British actress Emily Watson. The director is also British-born, Mick Jackson, who has done a great deal of TV work, including the pilot for The Practice, as well as features such as The Bodyguard and L.A. Story.

For locations, they are shooting at a beach on the Eastern Shore, and in Dartmouth and Windsor, NS, which will stand in for Lexington, Kentucky.

Mulroney portrays Dr. David Henry, who one wintry night delivers his wife Norah’s twin girls, one of whom has Down syndrome. While his wife, played by Mol, is sedated, he gives the baby fated to have special needs to his nurse, played by Watson. Telling Norah that the other girl died, the two children are raised separately under very different circumstances, and don’t meet until much later in life.