Have you ever imagined having a brother or sister that you didn’t know? is a movie about twins who were each adopted by American and French couples shortly after they were born, later finding each other’s existence via SNS. The movie provides good insights into the Korean international adoption phenomenon and the hopes of the large number of adoptees who want to meet their birth parents. Why don’t we watch this heartwarming movie and think about the meaning of family for us and adoptees in both a narrow and a broad sense?

Plot: The movie starts with Samantha Futerman explaining that she wants to share her story of what happened to her a few days earlier. She received a friend request on Facebook one day from a girl named Anaïs Bordier who looks identical to her. After matching up some details such as birthdays and birthplaces, they arrived at the conclusion that they might be identical twins adopted right after they were born. They began to text and video chat via Skype and Samantha decides to visit Anaïs with her family. After confirming they were identical twins through DNA testing, their lives changed. The film documents their further experiences, including the Bordier family visiting the Futerman family in California, and the twins' subsequent trip to Seoul for the International Korean Adoptee Associations’ conference. Since they first met, they have sought their birth mother, who denies having the twins. In the end, they send a message to this woman to thank her for giving birth to them.

What I Focused On: Even though the twins were born of the same mother and had almost identical physical traits, the environments surrounding them made their lives very different. Samantha grew up to be an actor in LA, and Anaïs, a student attending the Central Saint Martins College of Arts and Design, pursued her fashion design interests in London. The fact that Samantha grew up with two older brothers and lived in a town where racial discrimination scarcely occurred helped her to become more extroverted than Anaïs, who grew up as an only child and suffered from the negative views of her peers, causing her to become introverted. Though the movie focuses on the bright scenes with the siblings’ reunion, I hope the viewers pay attention to what Anaïs underwent in her childhood.

Impressive Scenes: Since this is a movie based on a real-life story, nothing tragic happens from the beginning to the end. There’s less dramatic conflict in this movie than in the dramatic moments we experience in our daily lives.

The first scene in which the two women are lying down in the same bed. I think this scene is the most beautiful moment in the whole movie, since their playing tricks on each other in bed gave me the feeling that they’re really closely connected emotionally.

The second scene is where the families and friends are having dinner together. The friends and families of both twins come to meet each other. From the interview with Samantha’s older brothers, I caught a glimpse of Samantha’s joyful childhood. Samantha’s and Anaïs’s adoptive parents treated them both as their biological daughters, giving them love and supporting them to navigate their own lives. By watching the friends of the twins, including those who first recommended that Anaïs send a friend request to Samantha and those who flew all the way from the U.S. to film the twins’ reunion, I could sense their strong bonds and respect. Watching this scene, having and being a friend who can share my friends’ joy and sorrow, became one of my new goals this year.

South Korea earned the reputation of being a baby exporting country due to its civil war, which left many orphans. The twins in this movie, Samantha and Anaïs, continuously reach out to their biological mother while the mother keeps denying that she ever had any child at all. I truly wish their biological mother would contact her daughters and be sorry for abandoning them. While the movie shows no conflict between the main characters, it was the most emotional documentary film I’ve ever seen. I hope the viewers empathize with this movie filled with euphoria and heartrending scenes.