Tim Wardle brings to Rome Film Festival an entertaining yet shocking documentary about triplets separated at birth
Tim Wardle brings to Rome Film Festival the extraordinary yet disturbing documentary Three Identical Strangers, a CNN Films project which dusts off an old and well-known story in the United States.
In 1980 as 19-year-old, Bobby Shafran, attended his first day of university: a new classmate greeted him as Eddy and, after a short conversation with the stranger, Bobby discovered that there was another young man of the same age that looked exactly like him. Bobby and Edward “Eddy” Galland finally meet to discover that they are identical twins separated at birth, adopted and raised by different families. But something even more incredible happens: the two brothers are contacted by David Kellman after his mother noticed a pair of twins in the newspaper who looked exactly like her son. As a matter of fact, the brothers a triplet. After a joyful reunion Bobby, Eddy and David became media sensations, but their story also set in motion a series of events that brought to light an unbelievable and heartbreaking secret.
Wardle’s documentary is a mix of archive material and recent inteviews, but the british director also inserted some essential fictional scenes to recreate the story from the beginning. The result is an entertaining yet disturbing cinematic experience full of plot twists but, saying too much about them, means to spoil the dark surprise of the film.
If there’s something that can be reavealed is that many directors before Wardle tried to make a film of this news but, as he explained in a recent interview: «I’ve heard conspiracy theories about the political and media connections that some of the people and organizations involved in the story may have had.»
That said, Three Identical Strangers is for sure one of the most shocking documentaries of the year, as well as a must-watch for the curious and the movie lover.
