Review: Three Identical Strangers is the must-see doco of 2018

THIS superb investigative documentary digs deep into the tale of identical triplets reunited by the slimmest of chances after being separated at birth.

ATTENTION all devotees of the documentary form!

The intriguing, sobering and compellingly strange slice of real life carved out by Three Identical Strangers amounts to one of the best non-fiction features of 2018.

It all starts with an incredible tale of coincidence that happened in the US in the early 1980s.

Robert Shafran, Edward Galland and David Kellman were born identical triplets some two decades earlier, only to be adopted out by a young mother not capable of raising them.

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Three Identical Strangers is a must-see documentary.

By the slimmest of chances, the brothers accidentally found one another as adults, and from that moment on, were inseparable.

How slim a chance? Robert had enrolled as a student at a college that Edward has recently left. From the moment he set foot on campus, everybody was high-fiving the bewildered young man and calling him Eddie.

Three Identical Strangers (2018).

In a matter of hours, he was face-to-face with someone who was his exact double. One small story in a local newspaper relating the encounter was immediately spotted by David’s stepmother. An wildly implausible duo became a beyond-impossible trio.

The world’s media couldn’t get enough of the yarn — particularly as the brothers shared a wide range of eerily similar tics and traits — and David, Robert and Edward parlayed their fame into a successful New York restaurant.

Scene from the documentary Three Identical Strangers (2018)

All of this alone would make for a cracking doco. But there is more. So much more.

The upbeat coincidence of the siblings’ chance reunion is gradually overshadowed by the possibility there was nothing coincidental about their separation at birth.

If you don’t know what happened, keep it that way until you see this remarkable investigative work.

Three Identical Strangers is now showing exclusively at the Cinema Nova, Carlton (VIC). Release in other states around Australia to follow.

THREE IDENTICAL STRANGERS (M)

Rating: Four and a half stars (4.5 out of 5)

Director: Tim Wardle (feature documentary debut)

Starring: David Kellman, Robert Shafran, Edward Galland, Lawrence Wright.

A truth that hurts … and haunts

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Originally published as Review: Three Identical Strangers is the must-see doco of 2018