About the film

For years, Aaron Long was a happily unmarried man living a single life in Seattle. That all changed practically overnight thanks to a 21st-century combination of old-fashioned curiosity and cutting-edge technology.

Back in the mid-90s during his carefree twenties, Aaron had been a sperm donor as an easy way to make some extra cash, earning “forty dollars a pop” for each donation. Over two decades later, he registers with a DNA-based ancestry site and soon discovers he has several known children, with speculative math suggesting there may be more than 60 others out there.

Aaron invites several of his newly discovered children to spend time with him at a “Meet My Kids” party and not long after, two of the children, the mother of one, and Aaron’s own aging mother are all living in the same bohemian Seattle co-op; three generations of genetically related strangers building a family from scratch.

After Aaron shares his saga with The New York Times, the unlikely clan experiences growing media exposure and diminishing privacy. And the more his story spreads — the bigger and more complicated it grows.

Dad Genes tells a new kind of story, one that would not even have been conceivable until very recently. In looking closely at one non-traditional family — led by a man who never particularly wanted one — we get a fresh perspective on what family means in the 21st century.