Chronic respiratory disease is something I've lived with as a parent. My son's severe asthma had him in and out of hospitals and doctor's offices from infancy on, including several life-threatening emergencies. Thankfully, as he grew to adulthood, the bad episodes became fewer, though there is never any end to it.
So Marc Smolowitz's documentary "The Power of Two," about twin sisters who have survived nearly four decades with cystic fibrosis, an incurable lung disease that once killed most of its victims by their teens, hit me in a personal way. Seeing the half-Japanese sisters, Anabel Stenzel and Isabel Stenzel Byrnes, in scratchy 1980s videos with their hospital paraphernalia of IVs and inhalers and childish joy in each other's company brought back memories — let's leave it at that.
Based on a book of the same title the twins wrote about their lives with CF, the film is not designed, the way the so many Japanese medical documentaries and dramas are, to extract the audience's collective hanky from its purse. Instead it is frankly intended as a call to action, delivered with a convincing message of hope.