Documentary tells the dark story of separated triplets at birth



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The first time brothers David Kellman, Bobby Shafran and Eddy Galland were in the public eye, it was happy. The identical triplets then aged 19, separated at birth, had just learned of the existence of others.

Although they grew up separately, the three big boys with curly hair smoked the same cigarettes and finished each other's sentences. . They appeared on shows like Phil Donahue, became tabloid regulars in the '80s and even made an appearance alongside Madonna in 1985 "Desperately Seeking Susan". They opened a restaurant in the Soho district of New York, Triplets Roumanian Steak House

"We were falling in love," recalls Kellman in the new documentary "Three Identical Strangers."

complicated. Galland committed suicide in 1995. And the troubling reasons for their separation did not appear until after this first glimmer of reunion. "Three Identical Strangers", directed by British filmmaker Tim Wardle, is the strangest narrative that the fiction behind their story, one of the most disturbing cases of separation at birth.

Since his debut at the Sundance Film Festival, the real-life roller coaster ride in a dark and twisted story – has amazed and enraged moviegoers in equal measure. He has renewed pressure on a child development center to make the study transparent. And he made the remaining brothers in the honor under much less festive circumstances.

"When we came into the limelight before the celebration, it was all fun," said Kellman, now 57 years old. "Yeah, but it hurts a lot too."

"I saw him at the theater really made me," he added. "I cried like a baby."

"Three Identially Strangers", which begins in theaters on Friday, is a well-documented case that has largely disappeared from public memory. The triplets were found in 1980 (Shafran, remarkably, arrived at a community college in New York only to find everyone already knew him, believing him to be the Galland already enrolled), another discovery followed.

The triplets, born in 1961, were placed with three families – one upper class, one middle, one work – by the late Louise Wise Agency as part of a study on nature versus education by the Child Development Center, which will later merge with the Jewish Council of Services to the family and childhood, a major 140-year-old nonprofit organization in New York City

which included an unknown number of twins – was conducted through the 1960s and 70s by Dr. Peter Neubauer, u n eminent Austrian psychologist who died in 2008. Without the knowledge of children or their parents, the researchers studied the development of children until triplets appeared on television.

I do not know what these people will do, if anything. I just know what they did was wrong, "said Shafran. They can blame people who are no longer alive, but it is an institution, an institution continues. The entire study should just be open for starters. "

The study records, stored at Yale University, will not be unsealed until 2066. Some heavily redacted research has been shared by the Jewish Council with Kellman and Shafran but only in the last days of post-production on "Three Identical Strangers" after months of efforts by filmmakers and family. "He was gritting his teeth to get every page," says Kellman.

" They did not want to talk to us during the movie, "said Wardle." They did not engage with us via a crisis management public relations company that they had hired. They would only engage with the brothers via a medical malpractice lawyer. I would say that the Jewish Council was extremely useless. "

A spokesman for the Jewish Council declined to specifically respond to these assertions or to answer questions regarding the release of the study, in response to a statement to the Associated Press." recognize the great courage of the people who participated in the film, and we are grateful that this film has created an opportunity for public discourse. about the study. "

Several other groups of twins involved in the study also met, including Elyse Schein and Paula Bernstein, who wrote a memoir in 2007, and Doug Rausch and Howard Burack, appeared on" 20/20 "Most of the people I've talked to involved in the study just want to know: was something learned?" Wardle said, "My producer and I sometimes left an interview with them." course: "Oh my God! This story is amazing! I can not believe it! And then you would think later: Actually, it was the life of these guys.We should remember that this n & # 39; It was not just a good story. "

Shafran, a Brooklyn lawyer who has two children with his wife for 30 years, criticizes the Jewish Council for" hiding all this in secret. "But he has few Hope to do so.Their story has already been told in a New York play by Lawrence Wright, published in 1995 on the twins, who made a book. they said that the brothers had stopped speaking publicly.

"We have not done anything since the lights went out, we have not done anything since Eddy died," said Shafran.

But "Three Identially Strangers" "Was a surprisingly rewarding process for the Shafran brothers remembered to have been upset by watching the panting faces of a Sundance audience after their strange trip The brothers were not particularly close at the time of the filming, but the film helped to repair their relationship.

"You do not get together with your brothers and sisters as much as you like. Kellman, who works in insurance and lives in New Jersey, said that Kellman, who has children the same age as Shafran, is getting divorced.

And they are definitely impressed by Wardle's film They greatly prefer their experience as documentary subjects to "lab rats".

But ask them to draw their own conclusions about what their story means in terms of nature versus culture, and they are at "It's very hard for me to watch this film objectively," says Kellman, "For to enter into the nuances between the brothers as individuals, one would have to make a much longer movie, a movie that no one could stand because it is our life. "

— [19659002] Follow Jake Coyle, author of the AP, on Twitter: http://twitter.com/jakecoyleAP

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