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Three Identical Strangers begins with the story of Bobby Shafran, who starts college in 1980, at the age of 19, and as soon as he arrived, he’s mistaken for someone called Eddy, which turned out to be one of his triplets, of whom he knew absolutely nothing.
Even as he, and friend Michael Domnitz, are on their way to meet Eddy, they get pulled over by a cop for speeding, who says they’d bettter have a damn good reason for doing so… and agrees when they tell him that he’s not going to believe it. Before long, they learned of the third of their number – David Kellman.
When they were ‘announced’ to the world, we can see from archive footage that they all talk at the same time, they admit all smoke the same brand of cigarette, and they all like older women, they each grew up with adopted sisters, they all had very different upbringings, and they can all continue and finish each other’s sentences.
They got into the drink and drugs of the ’80s, even going to the famous Studio 54 nightclub, even to the point where their mother showed them the New York Post and shouted, “I gotta look at the newspaper to find out where you were last night(?)”
The reason for how they came to live apart was a very dark one, though, and it was clear from the start that out of the three, they were only interviewing two of them. As for why, I’ll put that in a spoiler section in case you don’t want to know before you watch the film…
Three Identical Strangers is a fascinating documentary, and in watching it on Channel 4, on a Thursday night at 9pm is exactly the sort of thing they should be showing on a regular basis in primetimes – NOT dull shite like Gogglebox.
Three Identical Strangers is released on June 10th Blu-ray and DVD.
Detailed specs:
Cert: 
Running time: 96 minutes
Cinema Release date: November 30th 2018
Studio: Dogwoof
Format: 1.85:1
Rating: 8.5/10
Director: Tim Wardle
Producers: Tara Elwood, Becky Read
Music: Paul Saunderson
Cast:
Bobby Shafran
Michael Domnitz
Howard Schneider
Ellen Cervone
Alan Luchs
David Kellman
Hedy Page
Alice Shafran
Elliott Galland
Eddy Galland (archive footage)
Richard Kellman (archive footage)
Justine Wise Polier (archive footage)
Mort Shafran
Ilene Shafran
Janet Kellman
Brenda Galland
Lawrence Wright
Natasha Josefowitz
Elyse Schein
Dr. Peter Neubauer
Lawrence Perlman
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.