In a small-nation film and media ecology, cogent thinking about capacity building is of critical importance. In the context of Danish documentary filmmaking, twinning has emerged as a promising model. Twinning engages Danish filmmakers with a world beyond Denmark, thereby counteracting certain parochialisms. At the same time, this model ties in with the Danish state’s development goals in the cultural domain, including the aim of fostering dialogue and understanding between Denmark and the countries of the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region. This article evokes the landscape of twinning, as developed by Danish institutions, and provides a rationale for taking the phenomenon of transnationally paired practitioners seriously. More specifically, twinning is seen as a means of realizing public values through filmmaking. A specific instance of twinning involving collaboration between a Danish and a Lebanese filmmaker is discussed in detail, the aim being to identify the conditions under which the relevant type of co-authorship can be said to succeed. The emphasis in this regard is on the ways in which a partnership of equals emerges in the process of making En Araber kommer til byen/An Arab Comes to Town (Larsen and Ghossein, 2008).