CPH:DOX 2026 - Something Familiar

British-Romanian filmmaker, Rachel Taparjan, sits both in the director’s chair and in front of the camera in her debut film, which feels like it has been a lifetime in the making – and indeed it has. As a child, she was adopted from Romania to England. In adulthood, questions of origin resurface. 

While accompanying another woman on her first trip back to their shared homeland, Rachel is drawn deeper into her own family history. When Rachel launches an international search for her missing sisters, she uncovers a painful legacy of abuse and exploitation.  The question is whether the creative power can help her rewrite the life story she has inherited? 
‘Something Familiar’ is an unusually powerful and unsparing film that courageously and compellingly tells a personal story with more than one twist along the way.