Lost and Found: Romania’s Hidden Adoption Market

Logline

When a young Canadian woman who was sold as an infant in post-Ceaușescu Romania returns to reclaim her identity, she uncovers the machinery that trafficked the sister she never knew, one of 30,000 children “exported” for adoption.

Synopsis

Almost thirty years after she was adopted from a marginalised Roma community in Călărași, Romania, by a middle-class Canadian family, Jessi begins a deeply personal investigation into her origins.

What starts as a search for identity becomes a confrontation with the post-revolution marketplace, a post-communist system that sold thousands of children for international adoption.

As Jessi travels back to her birth country, she uncovers unbelievable truths, contradictory records, meets evasive officials, and finds the sister she never knew existed.

Filmed over seven years and across two continents and four countries, LOST AND FOUND reveals tense reunions, intimate conversations, and DNA results in a vérité journey into memory, loss, and resilience.

The film explores the emotional cost of international adoption and the long shadow of a nation that has yet to reckon with its past. Ultimately, LOST AND FOUND asks: When does a human life become a commodity, and who has the right to claim it back?

Watch the trailer