It’s the same in every family. Everyone remembers differently. You might have a clear memory of being a kid and your sister jumping on your stomach till you threw up; but she swears it was the other way round. The way families tell their stories with totally different meanings is at the heart of this beautiful and funny doc by Canadian actress-filmmaker Sarah Polley (who directed Michelle Williams in ‘Take This Waltz’). She was 11 when her mum Diane died of cancer. Growing up, everyone joked that Sarah looked nothing like her dad, and she also heard rumours that her mum had fallen in love with another man. Nosing around, she digs up a secret.
That makes ‘Stories We Tell’ sound like one of those ‘me-me-me’ films where a celeb goes off in search of their roots. It’s not. Polley sits down with family and friends and asks them each to tell the story of her mum from the start. Everyone has a different story. I found myself holding my breath listening to them talk. The story twists like a thriller.