Quietly sitting at number 3 in Netflix’s global documentary chart this week is a film that has left millions emotionally wrecked: Tell Me Who I Am (2019), the Ed Perkins-directed masterpiece that currently holds a near-perfect 97% on Rotten Tomatoes and is being called “the best true-crime documentary of the decade” by viewers who can’t stop rewatching it.

At first glance it looks like a simple story of twin brothers. In 1982, 18-year-old Alex Lewis wakes from a coma after a motorcycle accident with total amnesia. The only person he recognises is his identical twin, Marcus. Over the following years Marcus painstakingly rebuilds Alex’s entire life: their childhood, their parents, their home. Alex trusts him completely. Until, decades later, their mother dies and Alex discovers photographs and diaries that prove almost everything Marcus told him was a lie.

What unfolds is not a whodunnit but a devastating exploration of identity, trauma, and the darkest kind of family secret. Marcus had protected Alex from the truth of their childhood sexual abuse at the hands of their mother and a ring of paedophiles. He had chosen silence over shattering his brother twice. When Alex finally learns the full horror, the film becomes a raw, real-time confrontation between the twins: two men who look identical but have lived completely different lives inside the same skin.

Perkins films the brothers in stark, symmetrical close-ups, letting silence do the screaming. There are no reenactments, no dramatic music — just two men, a table, and the unbearable weight of memory. The final 20 minutes, when Marcus finally tells the unfiltered truth, have been described by viewers as “the most powerful scene ever put on film.” One Netflix review simply reads: “I have never cried so hard at a documentary. I’m on my fourth rewatch and it still destroys me.”

The film’s power lies in its refusal to offer easy catharsis. There is love between the brothers, but also rage, guilt, and grief that may never heal. As Alex says in the closing moments: “I trusted him with my life. And he lied to me for 30 years.”

Since resurfacing on Netflix, Tell Me Who I Am has sparked a tidal wave of emotional testimony. #TellMeWhoIAm has over 800k posts, with viewers confessing sleepless nights, therapy breakthroughs, and endless rewatches “to process what I just saw.” Mental health charities have reported increased calls from survivors, while support groups cite the film as a painful but vital conversation starter.

Critics remain in awe. The Guardian called it “a documentary that redefines the form,” while Roger Ebert’s site wrote: “It will haunt you long after the screen goes black.”

At just 85 minutes, Tell Me Who I Am is short — but it will live inside you forever. If you can handle something that doesn’t just tell a story but changes how you understand truth, memory, and love, press play.

But be warned: once you know, you can never un-know.