Three Identical Strangers

"Tim Wardle's engrossing and sometimes enraging documentary… grows darker and more disturbing, before developing into a shocker"

The New York Times
  • Archive - Festival 34
  • Director: Tim Wardle
  • USA 2018
  • 98 minutes
  • English
  • Subtitles in Hebrew

In the 1970’s, three young men in suburban New York who looked exactly alike found out that they were triplets, and that they were separated at birth when three different families each adopted one of them.

So begins Three Identical Strangers, which reconstructs the wild spectacle when the media got wind of the brothers. The boys were an instant comedy show (and ran a Manhattan restaurant call Triplets), but their story took a dark turn with news that a trusted Jewish adoption agency had separated the three babies to study them, with disastrous effects.  Tim Wardle’s doc scrutinizes the nature versus nurture debate for which triplets and twins were torn away from their siblings, all in the name of science.

Filmography:  One Killer Punch (2016), Lifers (2012).


  • Director Tim Wardle
  • Production Becky Read, Grace Hughes-Hallett
  • Cinematography Tim Cragg
  • Editing Michael Harte
  • Music Paul Saunderson
  • Festivals Sundance (Special Jury Award), HotDocs
  • Source Park Circus, Glasgow