Amandine Gay’s A Story of One’s Own is an educative film with illuminating findings about international adoption, now playing at CPH:DOX 2021.
The 2021 edition of Copenhagen’s international documentary film festival, known as CPH:DOX, is in full swing. As part of the NEXT:WAVE Competition, our contributor Patrick Scott has spotted and reviewed Amandine Gay’s A Story of One’s Own (original title: Une histoire à soi), a documentary following five adoptees from Brazil, Sri Lanka, Rwanda, Australia and South Korea who share their common experiences of being separated from their birth families and communities, and raised abroad.
A Story of One’s Own unmasks the controversy surrounding international adoption, as five adoptees raised in France share life-stories that reveal the overlooked impacts of cultural uprooting through adoption.
Directed by Amandine Gay, who was herself an international adoptee, this reflective documentary is explored through the voice-over of its subjects. As photos and home-made videos scrawl across the screen, the film offers a penetrative insight into the many existential challenges faced by these individuals assimilating into foreign countries and families.
As a sociological experiment, it is deeply fascinating in revealing the remarkable similarities shared between the five individuals all born from separate countries, living with completely different families, but all experience similar emotional scarring.
Strikingly, each adoptee rapidly discarded any shred of their home country to feel more comfortable with their new family. Originally from Korea, Justine describes how “you don’t retain much from your country of origin”, while Nicolas from Rwanda “tried to kill it” by refusing to speak his native tongue despite attempts from his parents to learn it; “I completely disowned my origins”.
Even further, the adoptees each have an itching desire to connect with their biological families. However, when they do so, they feel a numbness that fails to fulfil their sense of identity. For example, as an adult, Matheus re-unites with his family in Brazil, but felt “like an observer” and “felt no emotion”. Even Justine recognised physical similarities when visiting Korea, but never felt like she was the same.
While many interesting topics are raised, the film lacks a creative imagination to bring these stories to life. Given the director herself is an adoptee, it feels a missed opportunity not to infuse herself into the project to reveal first-hand the challenges faced. Not only this, only pictures and home-made videos give a sense of the adoptee’s life growing up. Interviews or perhaps seeing how they are now to understand the current effects would have been far more impactful.
