Side x Side Project / An international journey through 100 personal memories and experiences of abandonment, relinquishment, orphanages, aging out, and inter-country adoption from South Korea.

NY Times Op Doc, “Given Away”… a 16-minute adaptation of the Side by Side project. NYT YouTube Channel.

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Found in Korea / Follow Nam, a Korean-American adoptee found on the streets as an infant, on her first journey back to S. Korea as she searches for her birth family, her culture and her roots. What will she find in Korea?

 

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Calcutta is My Mother / A feature length documentary telling the story of one transracial adoptee’s first journey back to the city of her birth. Reshma McClintock, (founder of Dear Adoption,) was born and abandoned in Calcutta, India in March of 1980. She was adopted and raised in the US. During her time in Calcutta, Reshma strives to connect to her heritage, understand newly discovered grief, and reconcile her love for her adoptive family and longing for the family she has never known and may never find. Calcutta is My Mother is the emotional documentation of Reshma’s journey home; of her losses, gains, and search for identity. The film premiered in 2019 to a sold out audience in Portland, Oregon.

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Six Word Adoption Memoirs / If you had six words to tell your adoption story, what six words would you choose?

 

 

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Father Unknown / Captured on a camera phone as it happened, FATHER UNKNOWN is the true story of a man’s struggle to face the emptiness he carries inside. Disconnected from the people closest to him and haunted by the secrecy in his family, he records his desperate search for connection on a journey with the father he’s never truly known. This endearing and universal story brings audiences along for the ride in real time on a deep and powerful journey, inspiring courageous conversations about the search for identity, the longing for connection in family relationships, the resilience of the human spirit, and the journey to heal the pain of the past.

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You Follow / It’s 2009. Nisha Grayson packs her bags, and with four of her closest friends sets out on a journey from the home she has known for twenty eight years. She travels from Sacramento, CA to her birthplace in Goa India on a quest for answers, family and true identity. YOU FOLLOW chronicles the experiences of an adoptee with a mind full of questions and a heart full of determination. When steps in the right direction lead to forks in the road, when loyalty and commitment come from unlikely strangers – Nisha faces an emotional series of unexpected challenges that test her character.

The underlying questions create a heartfelt saga that brings Nisha and her friends back and forth from India to the United States to find the answers to tehse questions: Who is Nisha’s birth mother, and will she ever meet her? With her perils come pain; with her progress comes hope. Twenty eight years after her adoption, this 39-month journey leads Nisha to deep introspection through her inspiring commitment to pursuing truth, and the adventure that comes along with it. In its essence, YOU FOLLOW is a compelling story about resilience, family and identity.

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Mercy Mercy / The short version of the story goes… At first sight, adoption seems like a win-win situation: a poor orphan gets some loving parents and a good life. But the world of adoption is a question of supply and demand, with Ethiopia as a chief supplier of thousands of needy children. The fact that the well-being of the child is not always top priority becomes painfully clear in this tragic story about Masho and her little brother Roba.

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Twinsters / In February 2013, Anaïs Bordier, a French fashion student living in London, stumbled upon a YouTube video featuring Samantha Futerman, an actress in Los Angeles, and was struck by their uncanny resemblance. After discovering they were born on the same day in Busan, Korea and both put up for adoption, Anaïs reached out to Samantha via Facebook. In Twinsters, we follow Samantha and Anaïs’ journey into sisterhood, witnessing everything from their first meeting, to their first trip back to Korea where their separation took place.

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Closure / A documentary about a transracial adoptee who finds her birth mother, and meets the rest of a family who didn’t know she existed, including her birth father. A story about identity, the complexities of trans-racial adoption, and most importantly, closure.

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Daughter from Danang / A heartbreaking documentary that upsets your expectations of happily-ever-afters, Daughter from Danang is a riveting emotional drama of longing, identity, and the personal legacy of war. To all outward appearances, Heidi is the proverbial “all-American girl”, hailing from small town Pulaski, Tenn. But her birth name was Mai Thi Hiep. Born in Danang, Vietnam in 1968, she’s the mixed-race daughter of an American serviceman and a Vietnamese woman. Fearing for her daughter’s safety at the war’s end, Hiep’s mother sent her to the U.S. on “Operation Babylift”, a Ford administration plan to relocate orphans and mixed-race children to the U.S. for adoption before they fell victim to a frighteningly uncertain future in Vietnam after the Americans pulled out. Mother and daughter would know nothing about each other for 22 years.

Now, as if by a miracle, they are reunited in Danang. But what seems like the cue for a happy ending is anything but. Heidi and her Vietnamese relatives find themselves caught in a confusing clash of cultures and at the mercy of conflicting emotions that will change their lives forever. Through intimate and sometimes excruciating moments, Daughter from Danang profoundly shows how wide the chasms of cultural difference and how deep the wounds of war can run–even within one family.

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Adopted: For the Life of Me / A film by Jean Strauss documenting adoptee access.