Three Identical Strangers

Three Identical Strangers is a 2018 documentary film, directed by Tim Wardle, about the lives of Edward Galland, David Kellman, and Robert Shafran, a set of identical-triplet brothers adopted as infants by separate families. Combining archival footage, re-enacted scenes, and present-day interviews, it recounts how the brothers discovered one another by chance in New York in 1980 at age 19, their public and private lives in the years that followed, and their eventual discovery that their adoption had been part of an undisclosed scientific "nature versus nurture" study of the development of genetically identical siblings raised in differing socioeconomic circumstances. The film premiered at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award for Storytelling. It was nominated for Best Documentary at the 72nd British Academy Film Awards, and was also on the short list of 15 films (out of 166 candidates) considered for nomination for Best Documentary Feature at the 91st Academy Awards, though it was not selected as one of the final five nominees for the award.