Synopsis
Canadian actress and filmmaker Sarah Polley investigates certain secrets related to her mother, interviewing a group of family members and friends whose reliability varies depending of their implication in the events, which are remembered in different ways; so a trail of questions remains to be answered, because memory is always changing and the discovery of truth often depends on who is telling the tale.
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Cast
- Michael PolleyStoryteller
- Harry GulkinStoryteller
- Susy BuchanStoryteller
- John BuchanStoryteller
- Mark PolleyStoryteller
- Joanna PolleyStoryteller
- Cathy GulkinStoryteller
- Marie MurphyStoryteller
- Robert MacMillanStoryteller
- Anne TaitStoryteller
Recommendations
- 100
The Guardian
Polley tackles painful issues with candour and tact. She has a gripping tale to tell. It's a film that raises questions about the ownership of memory and ownership of narrative. - 100
IndieWire
Stories We Tell marks the finest of Polley's filmmaking skills by blending intimacy and intrigue to remarkable effect. - 100
Time Out
Polley has gone further into the thorny subject of forgiveness than any of her peers. Her movies ache with ethical quandary; Stories We Tell aches the most. - 91
The Playlist
Fans of Polley’s work to date will be delighted by a documentary that serves simultaneously as a gripping mystery, a moving record of a family and a fascinating investigation into the nature of truth, memory, and the documentary form itself. - 90
New York Magazine (Vulture)
So Polley has gone meta — exuberantly, entertainingly, with all her heart. - 88
Slant Magazine
Sarah Polley is much more interested in the malleability of memory and the consequential refractions felt throughout her kin rather than telling a linear narrative. - 80
The Hollywood Reporter
This playfully complex and gently slippery analysis of memory and personal narrative manages to engage us in what's essentially the private business, some might even say the dirty laundry, of total strangers. - 80
Variety
The alternately playful and elegiac Stories We Tell is wholly of a piece with her fiction work, and just as rewarding.
