A CSUN student’s film project turns up sperm donor who fathered her and 10 half-siblings

For 22-year-old Cal State Northridge film student Sara Sims, young adulthood has brought a whirlwind of life-altering news. First, she discovered she was conceived via a sperm donor, after her twin sister took a genetics test. Next, she found out she and her sister have 10 half-siblings across the country.

Then in early August she and co-director Samuel Barnett were named finalists in the prestigious annual Student Academy Awards overseen by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences—for a documentary about her family’s story of donor conception, reconnection and acceptance.

As producer and co-director, Sims led a team of seven students to produce an impactful, candid,16-minute documentary called “#2276.” The number that makes up the film’s title, #2276, is the code number that Sims’ sperm donor was assigned, and the number was referred to in sperm bank records.

“(Through the documentary) I want to show people, I want them to know, that it’s OK to ask questions,” Sims said in an Aug. 22 interview. “It’s okay to find whoever can answer them, whether that be your parents, your half-siblings, your relatives, heck, even go to your donor. It’s not such a rare thing and you’re not alone in all your experiences.”

Asking questions is exactly what Sims did, first in her personal life – and then on camera.

Her sister took a genetics test when they were both 17 to learn about their family tree and heritage, which led them to find out they were conceived via a sperm donor. Soon after, the two girls confronted their parents.

They learned that both their father and mother had struggled with infertility for years, and that their father was ashamed that they weren’t biologically related to him, so he never told them.

Sims said the stunning news didn’t make her see her father any differently. He raised her, he supported her, he knew her, whether they shared DNA or not.

“There are a lot of stories that make donor conception seem like a negative thing,” Sims said. “And yeah, some bad things have happened because of it. But I wanted to share all the good things that come from donor conception.”

After speaking to her parents, Sims searched for more information about her background, and she wasn’t the only one. She and her sister began to receive messages from half-siblings who had found them by taking genetics tests.

As Sims got to know her half-siblings, she realized they shared several traits—reddish-brown hair, creative passions and anxiety—but were also vastly different. She eventually got to hang out with some of her newfound half-siblings in person, which opened her eyes to the influences of nature and nurture.

They grew up in different environments, from small households with single mothers to large, middle-class families. The trajectories of their lives were those of strangers. Yet in some ways, she saw similarities. Many of the half-siblings prided themselves on their humor, or had dealt with mental health issues, or could often be found carrying cameras.

Then, in the fall of 2022, Judy Korin, Sims’ film professor at CSUN posed a challenge for her students: pitch an idea for a short documentary to their peers, have the class vote on their favorite ideas and work together to produce the winning project idea.

“This is just not a story that gets told,” Sims said. “And everyone in our senior thesis class had to pitch a (documentary) idea. I thought mine was a very different idea than what usually gets produced in school projects. So I was like, I’m just going to pitch this and see if anybody likes it—and they did.”

Sims’ pitch to tell her family’s story won. So she and her classmates got to work.

“Filmmaking is a collaborative art,” Korin said. “And it was completely student created and produced. They have to be very rigorous in the way they produce these films.”

The documentary is made up almost completely of one-on-one interviews with people integral to Sims’ recent discoveries, including her father and twin sister – and five of her 10 half-siblings, and even their sperm donor.

“I was nervous (to be interviewed),” said Sims’ father, Steve Sims, who works as a repair technician, fixing vaults and safes in Livermore, CA. “You know, I don’t do many interviews,’’ he said. “I’m not a very social person. But I’m absolutely glad I did it. It was a great experience.”

Once the documentary was finished, Korin encouraged Sims to submit it to several student film festivals, which she did, not thinking anything would come of it.

Months later, on July 19, 2023, she received a call from an ecstatic Korin—she was named a semifinalist in the Student Academy Awards, also known as the Student Oscars. “It felt amazing to watch the students achieve semifinalist status,” Korin said. “It’s a huge honor.”

The good news kept coming.

On Aug. 17, Sims learned she had moved on to the finalist phase. Her documentary is one of 26 films to achieve this honor, out of an international applicant pool of 2,443 entries, created by students hailing from renowned institutions like Columbia University, National Film and Television School (United Kingdom) and Hamburg Media School (Germany).

“It feels surreal to me. This is like a start of my future,” Sims chuckled and added, “It’s a pretty good start. It’s crazy to me.”

While Sims’ documentary highlights the benefits of genetics tests, experts do have privacy concerns about these technologies. Dr. Rennie Burke has conducted and published research on this topic with Harvard Medical School.

“There’s an issue around informed consent when it comes to these commercially available genetics tests,” Burke said in an Aug. 31 interview. “There’s lots of debate going on and this industry, it’s the Wild West. It’s pretty unregulated.”

Though the pluses and minuses for people who use these tests vary dramatically, Sims and her family say the experience has only brought them closer.

“I’m extremely proud of her,” Sims’ father said. “It’s awesome, what she’s created and her many accomplishments.”

Source: Orange County Register