"Side by Side" weaves the stories of nine inter-country adoptees, as they recall their families of origin, their relinquishment to orphanages, and their adoptions and lives abroad. Starkly minimalist, Side by Side is composed entirely of intensely intimate, first-person narratives, filmed in Seattle, Chicago, Boston, New York City, Paris, Stockholm, Amsterdam, and Melbourne—the stories of a baby being violently thrown from a car at the orphanage front door, relinquishment to a total stranger in a train station, life as "a Martian" and the complexities of being gay and a Korean-American adoptee, reuniting with birth parents and trying to make sense of relationships with mothers and fathers they’ve never known.
Directed by Glenn Morey and Julie Morey / Edited by David Emrich