GREAT DOCUMENTARIES
Three is the magic number
DOCUMENTARY SINGLE WINNER THREE IDENTICAL
STRANGERS Channel 4 Raw TV
When the production team behind Three Identical Strangers arrived at the Sundance Film Festival in 2018 for the premiere of their feature doc, their expectations were not high. “We turned up thinking we were going skiing and snowboarding most of the time,” says the film’s director Tim Wardle. At the first screening, director Darren Aronofsky
tweeted a recommendation, and the touch-paper was lit.
After winning the US Documentary Special Jury
Award for Storytelling at Sundance, Three Identical Strangers went on to take US$12.3 m at the box office, making it one of the most successful feature docs of all time. When it aired on CNN in January 2019 it became the most-watched CNN film premiere.
It broadcast on Channel 4 the following month and Netflix picked it up in 2020. Between then and now, it has won and been nominated for a slew of awards; it was short-listed for an Oscar. The story of the three identical twins, born in 1961 and reunited in 1980, had been developed by other film-makers, but never made it into production. Producer Grace Hughes-Hallett brought the idea to Raw in 2013 and gained provisional access to the two surviving brothers. Over five years the team at Raw, including producer Becky Read, turned it into a reality. Wardle only took on directing at a later stage, having been drawn in on the project as head of development at Raw. “It was a big step-up in terms of budget, scope and scale for me. My longest film
Tim Wardle explains how his feature doc’s laser focus on the lives of the three brothers at the heart of a famous adoption scandal brought the extraordinary and shocking story to life.
19
televisual.com Special Supplement Spring 2021
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