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Dying To Be Apart

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In 2003 the world held its breath as two remarkable twins, conjoined at the head since birth, went through a pioneering surgical separation. Ladan and Laleh Bijani didn't survive the procedure, but Dying to Be Apart talks exclusively to the key players in the remarkable drama that ended in their tragic deaths. In previously unseen family video footage the twins confide their private thoughts about the separation while friends, family and the doctor who performed the operation reveal the extraordinary story behind their decision to be apart. The film uncovers Ladan and Laleh's intense and complicated relationship and explores their growing realisation that they could no longer bear to be literally stuck with each other. It includes unprecedented access to Dr Keith Goh, the leading surgeon at Singapore's Raffles Hospital who performed the separation, who explains the pioneering separation and the film unravels the complex moral and ethical issues that were faced by the twins and their medical team to carry out this operation. There are also interviews with the twins' birth parents, their adoptive father and sister, their school-friend Mojgan Zouhari and friends in the Iranian community in Singapore. It includes private photographs of the twins and friends' amateur footage of them in the run-up to their operation - a time that the women described as the happiest of their lives.

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