MdFF Review: “Love Chaos Kin”

Love Chaos Kin (Chithra Jeyaram, 2025) 4 out of 5 stars

A thoughtful documentary protagonist is a boon to a filmmaker, able to elevate even the simplest of subjects beyond its narrative limitations. In Love Chaos Kin, from director Chithra Jeyaram (Foreign Puzzle), the topic at hand is full of layered complexities, though at its core is mainly about love. Thanks to Lakshmi Iyer, the main character and anchor of the story, all the many nuances of text and subtext emerge in cinematic glory, making of the movie a moving testament to the human spirit.

Lakshmi and her husband, Narayanan, emigrated to the United States in 2001 from Chennai, India—each with good jobs in different IT fields—and soon thereafter started trying to get pregnant. By 2009, after years of old-fashioned methods and then fertility treatments, they were ready to adopt. As Green Card holders, they were not candidates to adopt from either their native country or within the U.S., and as people of color they faced additional challenges. Never in their wildest dreams did they imagine themselves adopting twin white girls. And yet that’s exactly what happened.

Love Chaos Kin follows their amazing journey—also chronicled in an article Lakshmi wrote for the Huffington Post in 2017—and the additional adventure that began when Lakshmi surprisingly became pregnant in 2014. The three daughters are featured throughout, and we watch them all grow up onscreen, their relationship to parents and each other developing in ways both typical and unique to the situation.

What proves most mind-blowing about this tale is how much Lakshmi has worked to include her adopted daughters’ birth mother, Brandy, in their children’s lives. It was an open adoption to begin with (Brandy insisted), but Lakshmi goes above and beyond. A consistently loving presence, she creates a private blog filled with videos and photos for Brandy—called “Mommy B” by the girls—to be able to participate from afar.

As we learn, Brandy felt she had no choice but to put her daughters up for adoption, given how fragile her finances were to start. And though the birth father, Daniel, denies paternity, Brandy nevertheless wanted the girls to know about his Navajo heritage. This was another condition of the adoption, to which Lakshmi agreed.

In short, the women are the remarkable center of this poignant, sweet film. It may follow conventional nonfiction techniques but still delivers deeply affecting moments, thanks to Lakshmi, Brandy, and the rest of the family. It’s the best kind of love, chaos, and kin.

[Love Chaos Kin just screened at the 2025 Maryland Film Festival.]

Christopher Llewellyn Reed

Chris Reed is the editor of Film Festival Today. A member of both the Online Film Critics Society (OFCS) and the Washington DC Area Film Critics Association (WAFCA), and a Rotten Tomatoes-approved film critic, Chris is, in addition, lead film critic at Hammer to Nail and the author of Film Editing: Theory and Practice.