If the Lifetime Channel is looking for its next movie, they need not look any further then the story of Emilie Falk and Lin Balkman. Emilie and Lin are twins who were born in Indonesia and were placed for adoption. However, the two were placed in separate forever homes, both in Sweden. According to a Yahoo! News article, the two families knew of eachother, but the adoption records showed too many inconsistencies to prove that Lin and Emilie were in fact related.
According to the article, when Lin’s parents were finalizing the adoption they had no idea she had a sister at the orphanage. They only found out because their taxi driver asked the family “What about the other one, the sister?” as they were leaving the orphanage. The article said the Balkman’s wrote down Lin’s sister’s Indonesian name, and eventually found Emilie and the Falk family.
This reunion lasted only a short period of time because the adoption records showed too many inconsistencies and at this time there was no DNA testing. According to the article, though Emilie and Lin were supposed to be twins their adoption papers listed two different fathers and there were reasons to believe they had different mothers as well, though the records both showed their mothers name was Maryati Rajiman.
After a few visits as babies, the two families lost contact with eachother. According to the article, neither Emilie or Lin were interested in their birth families growing up so the story was put on the back burner. Emilie said in the article that when she was preparing to get married, two years ago, she began to think about her birth family, and her mother reminded her of the story of her youth; and that she may have a sister.
Because Emilie’s parents kept Lin’s name, they were able to reunite via Facebook. According to the article, the two lived 40 miles apart in Sweden, are both teachers, and danced to the same wedding song, “You and Me” by Lifehouse.
After reconnecting, Emilie and Lin took a DNA test, which showed that there was a 99.98 percent chance they were sisters.
While looking through their adoption records again, Emilie and Lin noticed that though there are a lot of contradictions, there are references to their father being a taxi driver. Which brings the story back to the beginning, where a cab driver first alerted the Balkman’s to Emilie’s existence.