Warning: this section contains spoilers. If you haven’t read the book yet, do so before reading on — the reveal lands much harder when you’ve spent time with the story.

After their mother dies, Alex discovers a disturbing photograph in her bedside drawer. This leads to the uncovering of a devastating family secret: both brothers were subjected to serious childhood sexual abuse, facilitated by their mother. Marcus had known this all along — and chose to protect Alex from it by never telling him when he was rebuilding his memory after the accident. The central question of the book is whether that was an act of love or an impossible burden to carry alone.

Read the book first. The documentary is structured around the same central reveal — but that moment lands significantly harder if you’ve already spent time inside Alex’s perspective on the page. The documentary also goes further than the book in some areas, particularly around details Marcus held back in print. Think of the book as the foundation and the documentary as the layer that deepens everything once you already care about both brothers.

Both Alex and Marcus Lewis survived their traumatic childhoods and went on to build full lives. They are both married with children, and together they run the Fundu Lagoon boutique hotel on the island of Pemba in Tanzania. Alex has said: “You can move forward. These harrowing things can happen to you, but we’ve all got the opportunity to put that aside and live our lives.”

The twins’ mother was Jill Dudley, born in 1931, who died of cancer in 1995 at the age of 63. Their biological father was John Lewis, a salesman who died in a car crash when the twins were just three days old. They were raised by their stepfather, Jack Dudley, an accountant. It was after their mother’s death that Alex began asking questions — and the darkest truths about their childhood started to come to light.

Their stepfather Jack Dudley was described as a bully who forced the boys to sleep in the garden shed. This was part of a broader pattern of neglect and dysfunction within the family home — a home that, from the outside, appeared respectable and normal.

Alex and Marcus Lewis are the co-owners of Fundu Lagoon, a luxury boutique hotel on Pemba island, off the coast of Tanzania. They established the hotel after the publication of their memoir and documentary, and it remains their main business today.

The documentary was directed by Ed Perkins, a British filmmaker who received an Oscar nomination for his short film Black Sheep. In Tell Me Who I Am, Perkins structured the documentary in two halves — first hearing Alex’s version of events, then Marcus’s — which makes the reveal of the secret especially powerful. It was released on Netflix in October 2019.

Tell Me Who I Am is available to stream on Netflix. It was released in October 2019 and runs approximately 85 minutes. Most people recommend reading the book first — the documentary recontextualises the story in a way that hits hardest when you already know the characters.