Three Identical Strangers

Three Identical Strangers
Theatrical release poster
Directed by Tim Wardle
Produced by
  • Becky Read
  • Grace Hughes-Hallett
Starring
  • Robert Shafran
  • Edward Galland
  • David Kellman
Music by Paul Saunderson
Cinematography Tim Cragg
Edited by Michael Harte
Production
companies
Distributed by Neon
Release date
  • January 19, 2018 (2018-01-19) (Sundance)
  • June 29, 2018 (2018-06-29) (United States)
Running time
 96 minutes
Country
  • United States
  • United Kingdom
Language English
Box office $12.3 million[1]

Three Identical Strangers is a 2018 documentary film directed by Tim Wardle and starring Robert Shafran, Edward Galland, and David Kellman. It examines a set of American triplets who were adopted as six-month-old infants by separate families, unaware that each child had brothers. The separations were done as part of an undisclosed scientific "nature versus nurture" twin study, to track the development of genetically identical siblings raised in differing circumstances. The documentary reveals how the brothers discovered one another at age 19 and thereafter sought to understand the circumstances of their separation.[2][3]

The film premiered at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival,[4] where it won the U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award for Storytelling.[5]

Premise

The three brothers were born to a single mother on July 12, 1961. They were actually quadruplets; the fourth brother died at birth.[6] At the direction of a Jewish adoption agency and psychiatrists Viola W. Bernard and Peter B. Neubauer, the three infants were intentionally placed with families at different economic levels — one blue-collar, one middle-class, and one upper-class — who had each adopted a baby girl from the same agency two years earlier. The brothers were raised by their adoptive families as David Kellman, Eddy Galland, and Bobby Shafran, respectively.[7][8] They discovered one another through a coincidental college connection in 1980 and became very close, but all three struggled with depression throughout their lives, which ultimately led to Galland's suicide in 1995.[8]

Reception

On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 95% based on 126 reviews, with an average rating of 8.2/10. The website's critical consensus reads: "Surreal and surprising, Three Identical Strangers effectively questions the nature of reality and identity."[9] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 81 out of 100, based on 28 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".[10]

The Neubauer twin experiment was first publicized in a 1995 New Yorker article by investigative journalist Lawrence Wright,[11] who appears in the film. The same, never-completed twin study was the subject of the 2007 memoir Identical Strangers[12] and the 2017 documentary The Twinning Reaction.[13]

References

  1. ↑ "Three Identical Strangers (2018)". Box Office Mojo. IMDb. Retrieved October 8, 2018.
  2. ↑ Brook, Tom (July 12, 2018). "Film tells of secret study of triplets". BBC News. BBC. Retrieved August 28, 2018.
  3. ↑ Stewart, Sara (June 23, 2018). "Separated-at-birth triplets met tragic end after shocking psych experiment". New York Post. Retrieved September 17, 2018.
  4. ↑ Ryan, Patrick (June 26, 2018). "'Three Identical Strangers': How triplets separated at birth became the craziest doc of 2018". USA Today. Gannett Company. Retrieved August 28, 2018.
  5. ↑ Kilday, Gregg (January 27, 2018). "Sundance Film Festival 2018 winners list". The Hollywood Reporter. Prometheus Global Media. Retrieved August 28, 2018.
  6. ↑ "Eddy Galland, Robert Shafran and David Kellman said Friday..." United Press International. November 26, 1980. Retrieved September 6, 2018.
  7. ↑ Saul, Stephanie (January 31, 1998) [First published October 18, 1997]. "Separated Triplets Had Been Studied Since Birth". Newsday. Retrieved August 28, 2018 – via Greensboro News & Record.
  8. 1 2 Kaufman, Amy (July 1, 2018). "The surreal, sad story behind the acclaimed new doc 'Three Identical Strangers'". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved August 28, 2018.
  9. ↑ "Three Identical Strangers (2018)". Rotten Tomatoes. Fandango Media. Retrieved October 8, 2018.
  10. ↑ "Three Identical Strangers Reviews". Metacritic. CBS Interactive. Retrieved October 8, 2018.
  11. ↑ Wright, Lawrence (August 7, 1995). "Double Mystery". The New Yorker. Retrieved September 17, 2018.
  12. ↑ Flaim, Denise (November 25, 2007). "Lost and Found: Twin sister separated at birth are reunited and work toward a new relationship". Racine Journal Times. Retrieved August 28, 2018.
  13. ↑ Shinseki, Lori. "The Twinning Reaction". Firehorse Pictures. Retrieved July 22, 2018.
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