Film Review: ‘Three Identical Strangers’

Separated at birth, then reunited at age 19 in 1980, New York triplets Bobby Shafran, Eddy Galland, and David Kellman became the toast of the talk-show circuit after learning that they were long-lost brothers.

Though their story received considerable exposure at the time — making them a welcome fixture at Studio 54, landing them a cameo with Madonna in “Desperately Seeking Susan,” and so on — the public tended to focus on the inspirational reunion rather than asking questions about the circumstances of their adoption.Turns out, the brothers’ story is much bigger and more complicated than anyone imagined, and is only now being properly revealed, thanks to director Tim Wardle’s jaw-dropping decades-later doc “Three Identical Strangers.” A gripping, stranger-than-fiction account of a real-world medical conspiracy, the film begins as a human-interest story and builds to an impressive work of investigative journalism into how and why they were placed with the families who raised them.

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