No doubt some people will dismiss the premise of this documentary (just like that of Couleur de peau: miel) as a first-world problem. Born in Sri Lanka, Priyangika “Priya” Samanthie, as a baby, was adopted into a Norwegian family. She grew up in Norway. She is Norwegian. What else does she want?
“I had been growing up with those TV shows where adoptees meet their parents, they run toward each other, everything is fine and then they end the show”, says the director. Well Priya’s story is different. Yes she travels to her birthplace to find her biological mother, and no, not everything is fine.
At times the film has a bit of soap opera feel, what with a mystery of Priya’s real father, or a surprise reencounter with her never-known-before sister. So what? Life is stranger than soap opera. Even the stereotypical “culture clash” rings true. When Priya, visibly upset, tells her — surely loving — adoptive father about some, er, irregularities in her adoption process, his reaction is: “I’ll have to reflect upon it”.
“It is absurd to move a child from one continent to another and give them a Norwegian name”, says Priya. A valid counterpoint to the hilarious scene in Ninjababy where the heroine, in her “Fatima” mode, accuses the wannabe parents of racism for not willing to adopt from abroad.
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