''The Lost Sons'' is a 2021 American-British documentary film, directed by Ursula Macfarlane. It follows Paul Fronczak, a man who discovers he had been abandoned as a child and mistakenly returned to another family whose young son was missing. Upon finding out he is not biologically related to his parents, Fronczak sets out to discover his true identity, and the whereabouts of the real Paul Joseph Fronczak. The film had its world premiere at

South by Southwest South by Southwest, abbreviated as SXSW and colloquially referred to as South By, is an annual conglomeration of parallel film, interactive media, and music festivals and Convention (meeting), conferences organized jointly that take place in m ...

on March 16, 2021.

Synopsis

The film follows, and is largely narrated by, a man who was raised as "Paul Fronczak" by a Chicago couple whom he was led to believe were his biological parents. Born in 1964, "Paul" stumbled across newspaper clippings at his family home when he was 10 years old. The news reports featured his parents grieving over a kidnapped baby son, then celebrating when he was recovered two years later, apparently abandoned by the kidnapper. In the 2010s, now in his 50s, Paul began an extensive investigation involving DNA tests, private investigators, and tapping into his media contacts for publicity, to determine what really happened. After many twists and turns, he discovers that he was not the kidnapped child, that his real name is Jack Rosenthal (from Atlantic City, New Jersey), that he has a still missing twin sister named Jill, and that the real Paul Fronczak is still alive and known by an adoptive name.

Production

In January 2021, it was announced Ursula Macfarlane would direct the film, with

CNN Films CNN Films is a motion picture division of CNN under Warner Bros. Pictures. originally launched in 2012. Its first film, ''Girl Rising'' premiered in spring 2013 in the United States. History On October 8, 2012, CNN announced the creation of CNN F ...

and

Raw Raw is an adjective usually describing: * Raw materials, basic materials from which products are manufactured or made * Raw food, uncooked food Raw or RAW may also refer to: Computing and electronics * .RAW, a proprietary mass spectrometry dat ...

set to produce.

Release

The film had its world premiere at

on March 16, 2021.

Reception

''The Lost Sons'' received positive reviews from critics. The

review aggregator A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews of products and services (such as films, books, video games, software, hardware, and cars). This system stores the reviews and uses them for purposes such as supporting a website where users ...

website

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

surveyed and, categorizing the reviews as positive or negative, assessed 16 as positive and 4 as negative for a 80% rating. Among the reviews, it determined an average rating of 6.4 out of 10.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Lost Sons, The 2020s English-language films 2020s American films 2020s British films 2021 films 2021 documentary films British documentary films CNN Films films Films about child abduction