‘Something Familiar’ Director on Teaching the Skeleton in Her Closet to Dance: ‘Catharsis and Creativity Can Alchemize Trauma’
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By Leo Barraclough
Published on March 20, 2026.
British-Romanian filmmaker Rachel Taparjan has released her debut feature, "Something Familiar," which premiered in the main competition of CPH:DOX, Copenhagen's documentary festival. The film, which follows her journey to find out her birth mother, Mihaela, who was adopted from the same Romanian orphanage as TaparJan, before she embarked on her own search for her siblings. The movie is about hope and overcoming adversity and trauma, focusing on themes of identity and belonging. The seed for the project was planted when Taparj received an email from Mihaea out of the blue about six years ago, asking for help in finding her mother. She also mentioned the portrayal of Romania in the media was inadvertently stigmatizing, but her film will deliver a different take on the country's history.
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