Twinsters

This week we watched a documentary called Twinsters. The film tells the true story of a pair of twins who were born in Busan, South Korea but were somehow seperated and adopted by different families. One goes to live in France and the other in the United States, not knowing that they have an estranged twin on the other side of the world for the first twenty-five years of their lives. The French twin Anais sees an American girl named Sam Futerman in a YouTube video that is nearly identical to her. Anais contacts Sam and they end up getting their DNA tested and find out that they are in fact related – not only are they sisters, but they are identical twins. Sam visits Anais who is now living in London, and later Anais visits Sam in Los Angeles. They both go to Korea together later and try to contact their birth mother, but she does not want to be contacted and by the end of the film, while disappointed, they make peace with their mother putting them up for adoption and wanting to live her own life. They send a final letter to their biological mother telling her they wish to speak with her, but respect whatever decision she comes to on the matter and are not angry at her. This movie was really interesting because despite Sam and Anais being identical twin sisters, both born in Korea and sharing many similarites, they were also raised on two different continents (North America and Europe, respectively) and are different in many ways as well. This movie provides an interesting case study about the age-old question of nature vs. nurture. After watching the movie I found myself feeling oddly invested in these two strangers lives, wanting to know more about how their lives and relationship had progressed  in the two years since the movie came out. I hope that they are able to enjoy having a newfound sibling while being able to maintain the lives they have built for themselves in their own countries, and I hope that one day they will be able to meet their birth mother.