Roll Credits: Film and TV Recommendations By and For Adoptees
Compiled by KC Lin (she/her)
Adoptee, 26
Nanchang Project Volunteer
From Hanchuan, Hubei; Living in Indianapolis, IN, USA
Characters
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Seen in Anne with an E (2017 - 2019 series), Anne of Green Gables (1985 film), Anne of Green Gables (1972 series)
At the time of learning about this character (around 10 years old), I didn’t think about my adoption much (unless it was forever family day or Chinese New Year etc). However, even then being adopted didn’t mean much other than the fact that my parents adopted me from China, I live in Canada, I have a Chinese middle name and that was that. Now that I’m older, I’ve started to reflect more on being adopted and am realizing now how many of my beloved characters were raised by their non-biological parents like me! I’ve always related to Anne (imaginative and kindhearted) but now I am more deeply connected to this character as she also has no connection to her biological parents. Her imagining what or who her parents were, was something that I related to, and still do today. Having the representation of someone like Anne Shirley will always be an important part of my identity, both as a person and as an adoptee.
Recommended by Jenna Makin (she/her)
Adoptee -
Seen in Avatar the Last Airbender (2005 - 2008 series)
Avatar the Last Airbender (ATLA) as a whole is a series that anyone can enjoy, but the character of Zuko is who kept me hooked on a personal level. His journey through internal conflict, which defines so much of the series, I very much relate to as an adoptee (I was so hooked, in fact, that I wrote a paper for my university Anthropology/Ethnography of Media class about Zuko’s relation to my life). I find that watching Zuko can be like looking through a looking glass at another version of myself. He is an animated, easy-to-digest, visual representation of my insides.
The show as a whole was healing to me as a Chinese adoptee, as the characters felt like friends and the setting, storyline, and inspiration for the series are allusions to the Asian diaspora and events in Asian history. It is a children’s show and there is a nice balance of lightheartedness and adventure, but as an adult it will draw you in with its characters and attention to detail. And as an adoptee, you may find yourself enjoying the powerful and playful portrayals of the main characters. And, like me, you may find yourself relating to Zuko’s struggle to prove himself, his search for belonging, his eventual disconnect from his upbringing, his internal struggle against the two halves of his legacy, and his eventual discovery of his found family.
Recommended by KC Lin (she/her)
Adoptee, 26 -
Family/Romance, 1h 49m
This movie is about a fire family moving to Elemental city where they have to learn to live with all the other elements. One water guy and a fire woman connect and push societal norms. As an adoptee, I always felt “other” to white and Asian society alike–not enough for either. I resonate with the code switching the main character Ember does to be more palatable to the space she is in.
The story is written and based on an immigrant story, which while not exactly the same as transracial adoptee’s experiences, it is akin to coming from two worlds. The movie also explores “belonging” while maintaining one’s concept of self.
Recommended by Sophia Bird (she/her)
Adoptee -
Seen in Frozen (2013 film), Frozen 2 (2019 film)
Elsa’s journey in Frozen 2 resonated deeply with my adoption journey because it reminded me that healing and identity are not resolved in one moment. Even after you “Let It Go,” there is still the deeper journey of discovering where you belong. Like Elsa, I’ve learned that even with loving people beside you, some roads must be walked alone. Into the Unknown captured the fear and loneliness of searching, while Show Yourself expressed the ache every adoptee carries — the hope that one day the hidden parts of us will finally be seen, understood, and welcomed home.
Recommended by Taylor DePetris (she/her)
Adoptee -
Seen in XO Kitty (2023 - current)
In XO Kitty, the character Alex Finnerty is a Korean adoptee. The actor, Peter Thurnwald, is a Korean adoptee in real life. I appreciate it because I like how it spreads light to the topic of adoptees travelling back and immersing themselves in their birth culture and I also appreciate how the show took the time to add that detail to represent Asian adoptees.
Recommended by Dawn (she/her)
Adoptee, 20
Films
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Documentary/Drama, 1h 37m
Found is a film that documents three Chinese adoptees who discover they are blood- related cousins and travel to China together in hopes of finding their biological families. The film also incorporates the lives of the families in China who are the potential matches to the girls. Unfortunately, in the end, none of them had a DNA match. But seeing these families’ perspectives was a big shift in how I viewed my adoption. When I first watched this film, I was 18 and a freshman in college. During this time my views on my adoption were narrow. I only ever thought about how it affected me – how I grew up in America with my white adoptive family because my biological family abandoned me. But after watching this film, after seeing the families in China share their side of the story and how they feel an immense loss and carry grief with them, my perspective changed. Those families hoped to be matched with their daughter and were disappointed when they weren’t. All of this made me realize it is a two-sided story. I am not just grieving the loss of an unknown family; a family is grieving the loss of their daughter. If those families in the film were hoping to find their daughter, maybe my family is too.
I highly recommend watching this documentary because I feel like sometimes adoptees, myself included, may forget about the other side of the story. We may never know the full story, but I find it important to have an open mind when it comes to the biological family and what they had to go through.
Recommended by LiYe Whalen (she/her)
Adoptee, 23 -
Family/Adventure, 1h 33m
The two main characters in The Good Dinosaur, a human and a dinosaur, lose their birth families and become chosen family. This shows that family is not just bloodline but a choice. Together, they process their grief and search for belonging. In the end, the dinosaur makes the hard decision to let the human boy go because of the chance to be raised by his same species. This highlights the importance of having people like you in an adoptee’s life.
Recommended by Sophia Bird (she/her)
Adoptee -
Family/Comedy, 1h 35m
I remember watching Meet the Robinsons when I was younger and I have always enjoyed its fun adventure and creative storyline. When I began my healing journey surrounding adoption and rewatched the movie, I found myself deeply connecting with Lewis, the main character, who is an orphan searching for belonging while learning to come to terms with his abandonment.
There is a scene in the movie where Lewis’s birth mother leaves him on the front steps of the orphanage and hurriedly walks away. Rewatching that scene, I instantly felt connected to my own adoption story because I, too, was left in front of a shop as a baby. Throughout the movie, Lewis spends time with a family who welcomes, adores, and gives him a true sense of belonging. Likewise, I am incredibly grateful for my family who adopted me and who continue to always care, love, and support me. I will always ponder, hope, and wonder about who my birth family is, but I will always carry them in my heart.
Recommended by Anna
Adoptee -
Family/Musical, 1h 28m
Mulan decides to fill in for her father in the Chinese imperial army to help fight off the Huns and ends up being instrumental in saving the country. As an early 2000s kid, this was one of the only ubiquitous media products celebrating Chinese characters and story. I saw myself on screen.
Recommended by Sophia Bird (she/her)
Adoptee -
Ne Zha: Adventure/Comedy, 1h 50m
Ne Zha II: Adventure/Comedy, 2h 24mOne of my recent favorite shows is Ne Zha which is produced in China and was in theaters last year. I got to see Part 1 via a streaming service, and then saw Part 2 in theaters. I really enjoyed the character development, graphics, and humor. I wished more Chinese-made movies were shown in the USA. I hope more are, because I am biased and think they're far superior in many ways.
Ne Zha, is a character with so much spunk/love. He truly wants to do the right thing, but he's also got a spicy side to him. I appreciated the character development of the show, and how colorful the graphics were. I could relate to the protagonist and his desire to be seen. He was determined and I appreciated the way he handled whatever was thrown at him. I can relate heavily to his experiences and am glad I got the opportunity to watch this well-made Chinese film!
Recommended by Ming Foxweldon (she/her)
Adoptee, 34 -
Documentary, 1h 25m
One Child Nation is a film that almost always comes up in conversations about adoptee-centered media. It is, in my opinion, required viewing for anyone who is a Chinese adoptee or has a Chinese adoptee in their life. It is in no way exhaustive of the perspectives or experiences of all whose lives were impacted by China’s One-Child Policy (Family Planning Policy), but it offers perspectives from families, adoptees, searchers, reporters, artists, villages, midwives, traffickers, and family planning officials who were a part of this moment in history. It’s deeply impactful to hear and see first-hand accounts of the impact this policy had and continues to have on lives, from a relatively recent source.
This film was made by Chinese filmmaker Nanfu Wang after she, herself, became a mother. She digs into her own family, dissects government propaganda, uncovers the numerous human-rights violations that took place, and interviews people first-hand. It uncovers much of the long untold/unknown parts of China's one-child policy and the generations of families forever shaped by it.
Recommended by KC Lin (she/her)
Adoptee, 26 -
Romance/Drama, 1h 46m
Past Lives (2023) follows Nora, who reconnects in adulthood with her childhood friend Hae Sung after years of separation following her family’s emigration from South Korea to Canada. Though the two periodically rekindle contact through online conversations, Hae Sung’s visit to New York City—where Nora now lives with her husband, Arthur—brings unresolved questions about identity, timing, and the lives they might have shared into sharper focus.
Movies and series that feature adoption often frame adoption through overt drama and neatly tied narratives that culminate in a conclusive resolution. In doing so, they can overlook the subtleties and ambiguities that are most characteristic of the adoptee experience. Past Lives expresses one of these dimensions—the absence of resolution that can accompany separation from one’s origins—in a way that adoptees may rarely see on screen.
The film is not specifically about adoption. Nor is it ultimately about romance, despite initially appearing to be so. Rather, it is about reconciling with the loss that comes from having left a part of oneself behind and later reencountering it. Importantly, the film resists tidy resolution. It acknowledges longing, uncertainty, unanswered questions, and unresolved endings as part of a life. This is something that many adoptees, particularly adult adoptees, may find deeply familiar.
As an adoptee, I was unexpectedly struck by how accurately Past Lives portrays a feeling an adoptee may feel, rather than simply an experience an adoptee may experience. The impact of the film is also in its universality to other life experiences.
Recommended by Anonymous
Adoptee, 26 -
Animation/Fairytale, 1h 15m
A princess is offered gifts from three fairies at her Christening. Another fairy was uninvited, and from her anger she cursed the princess to die once she pricks her finger on a spinning wheel before the sun sets on her 16th birthday. Instead one of the fairies changes it so she will sleep until true love’s kiss. The three kind fairies instead raise the princess until her 16th birthday to keep her safe from her fate.
I’m not entirely sure what the impact of this story had on my journey as an adoptee, but when I was a child I used to daydream that perhaps I was a long lost princess whose parents had to give me up for my safety. Slightly far fetched, but possibly the way that I as a child dealt with the knowledge that my birthparents had given me up.
It would be good for others to watch this movie because sometimes I feel like the circumstances have similarities. We all hope that our parents didn’t necessarily choose to give us up, but rather had to out of necessity. I feel like it’s similar in this story, the King and Queen entrusted the fairies to raise their daughter due to the circumstances that were put upon them. A lot of us may be able to relate to Aurora as she (like many of us) were raised by adoptive parents and know nothing about hers/our origins and that maybe this story may bring some of us hope that our parents do wish to meet us again.
Recommended by Jenna Makin (she/her)
Adoptee -
Romance/Noir, 1h 19m
Set in Shanghai and built around the Suzhou River that runs through the city, this film explores love and loss through the lives of a group of people who live on the fringe of society. When I first watched the film, I was struck by the theme of searching and loss. As an adoptee, I resonated deeply with the experience of scanning a crowd, searching for the face of someone I once knew. Additionally, I found the theme of lost love moving as someone who experienced a lasting rupture early on in life. Though the causes and situations are different, the emotions are universal. The river plays a central role in the film, and the movement of the water represents constant change punctuated by a quiet consistency. I connect this to my own fluctuating feelings as an adoptee. While the experience (the river) connects me to my past, present, and future, the contents within my own emotions and relationships are constantly changing.
While not a film that is specifically for adoptees/adoptive families/birth families/Chinese international adoptions, this movie immediately came to mind as a film I had watched when I was beginning to explore my own identity as a Chinese adoptee. Something about the characters living unconventional lives that are defined by love, loss, and searching for reunion appealed to me on a personal level. When I first explored Chinese media, I didn't feel like I could relate to most of the mainstream dramas. However, the gritty handheld and almost voyeuristic nature of the movie allowed an easier entry point in which the commonality of the characters and viewers was human feeling rather than socially lived experience.
Recommended by Xavier Huang (they/them)
Adoptee -
Adventure/Musical, 1h 28m
Tarzan resonated with me long before I understood why it resonated with me. I’m a huge music person, and the music from this movie — Phil Collins truly has a gift and he used it to the best of his ability for this movie — comforted parts of my adoptee pain I didn’t yet know how to explain. More importantly, it grounded me in the realization that you don’t have to be an adoptee to understand the feelings we carry. I wasn’t alone.
“You’ll Be in My Heart” feels like both a hug and a promise from the mystery family I’ve never known — a reminder that I was loved — while also becoming my promise back to them that I will never forget them.
“Strangers Like Me” perfectly captures the overwhelming curiosity and excitement Tarzan feels when he realizes he isn’t alone — that there are others out there like him. When I first found the online Chinese adoptee community, there couldn’t have been a better song to describe what I felt. The lyric “It all means something, yet nothing to me” hit especially hard. I needed to know.
Lastly, for the Tarzan musical, Phil Collins wrote a song called “Everything I Am.” I still struggle to explain what that song means to me. It feels like every emotion I carry about adoption wrapped into three minutes — the grief, the hope, and the dreams for what this journey could become. If there was one song I’d choose for the montage of my adoption journey, it would probably be this one.
Recommended by Taylor DePetris (she/her)
Adoptee -
Documentary/Animation, 1h 18m
I first heard about Tyrus Wong while searching for a children’s book to share during a college mini presentation. His story and legacy immediately inspired me, and I am grateful to have discovered his work and life story.
The children’s book I found, Paper Son: The Inspiring Story of Tyrus Wong, Immigrant and Artist by Julie Leung and illustrated by Chris Sasaki, offers a beautiful glimpse into Wong’s journey. It follows his immigration from China to America in 1920 during the era of the Chinese Exclusion, when he became what was known as a “paper son.” Wong later became known for the expressive scenic artwork that inspired the backgrounds in Disney’s Bambi, as well as for creating and flying kites throughout his life.
As I explored his story, I was drawn by the joy he seemed to carry throughout his life and the way he appreciated simple moments, such as spending time with his family and flying kites on a summers' day. As a Chinese American myself, I can see parts of my own experience reflected in his legacy — navigating between two worlds and building a life in an unfamiliar place. Reflecting on his story reminds me that I, too, can make a difference and accomplish meaningful things while also cherishing the simple joys in life, like sharing time with loved ones or enjoying an ice cream cone on a warm summer day.
Recommended by Anna
Adoptee
Shows
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Drama, 6 Seasons
A TV show I think all adoptees and their families should watch is This Is Us (2016-2022). This Is Us is a drama series that follows the lives of the Pearson family from the 1970's to present day. The Pearsons are a White family from Philadelphia and consist of: Jack and Rebecca, the parents; Kate and Kevin, who are twins, and Randall, who is a Black boy Jack and Rebecca adopted.
What makes This Is Us such a deeply impactful show is that each character goes through their own emotional journey that is relatable to viewers of the show. Randall's storyline, in particular, hit close to home for me when I watched the show. Throughout his childhood, Randall feels like an outsider in his family since he is the only Black member and he is adopted. He spends most of his life wondering if every Black man he sees is his birth father. Randall struggles with feeling seen and accepted by his family, and shares that his differences are often brushed aside or overlooked. As a transracial adoptee who was also raised in a White family, I felt very connected to Randall. I think many Chinese adoptees also struggle to feel fully understood or heard by others who are not part of the adoption community. For this reason, I think This Is Us is a fantastic show for Chinese adoptees to watch - hopefully witnessing Randall's journey will make others feel as understood as I did.
Recommended by Olivia H. (she/her)
Adoptee, 28This show follows the Pearson family through different stages of life. One of the main siblings is a transracial adoptee. I personally think they wrote his story with a lot of care, especially consulting with Angela Tucker, a Black transracial adoptee herself. It was the first time I saw adoption presented in media as a multifaceted experience–not just a script like “grateful adoptee.”
This show depicts the complexities of transracial adoption dialectally. In other words, love and trauma can coexist and they don’t negate each other. It also shows how as the adoptee grows and their relationship and proximity to whiteness changes, the world reacts differently.
Recommended by Sophia Bird (she/her)
Adoptee -
Romance/Young Adult, 3 Seasons
The show follows 16-year-old Kitty Song Covey to KISS, an international boarding school in South Korea. It’s a coming-of-age story with themes of friendship, LGBTQ+, identity, and surprise surprise, adoption.
Kitty isn’t adopted, but one of the new professors at KISS is. Alex is a South Korean adoptee from Australia. He chose KISS because he wants to meet another professor, his birth father. However, because Alex hasn’t decided if he wants a relationship with his birth father, he doesn’t reveal his true identity. Once Kitty discovers his secret, she enthusiastically pushes him towards a reunion, which he isn’t ready for.
While there isn’t time to dive into the history of international adoption or flesh out the complexities of search/reunion/post-reunion, the show offers some emotional truth and some examples of what not-to-do in certain situations.
Peter Thurnwald, who brings authenticity because he was adopted from South Korea to Australia, plays Alex. In an interview, he said they were very excited to have an adoptee play the role.
Recommended by LuLu Grant (she/her)
Adoptee
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