India All­wood grew up want­i­ng to be an actor. Armed with a stack of index cards (for research/​line mem­o­riza­tion/­make-shift con­fet­ti), she goes from awk­ward six­teen-year-old to Broad­way ingenue to TV super­hero.

Her new movie is a pres­tige pic­ture about adop­tion, but its spin is the same old tired sto­ry of tragedy. India is an adop­tive mom in real life though. She wants every­one to know there’s more to her fam­i­ly than pain and regret. So she does some­thing you should nev­er do — she tells a jour­nal­ist the truth: it’s a bad movie.

Soon she’s at the cen­ter of a media storm, bat­tling accu­sa­tions from the press and the paparazzi, from pro­test­ers on the right and advo­cates on the left. Her twin ten-year-olds know they need help — and who bet­ter to call than fam­i­ly? But that’s where it gets real­ly messy because India’s not just an adop­tive moth­er…

The one thing she knows for sure is what makes a fam­i­ly isn’t blood. And it isn’t love. No mat­ter how they’re formed, the truth about fam­i­ly is this: it’s complicated.