March 2nd: STORIES WE TELL (Sarah Polley, 2012)

A decades-old family secret is revealed and discussed.

Canadian-born Sarah Polley began acting at a very young age, and had early breakout roles in Terry Gilliam's The Adventures of Baron Munchausen and Canadian TV show Road to Avonlea. She has consistently worked with independent Canadian filmmakers including Atom Egoyan (The Sweet Hereafter, Exotica) and David Cronenberg (eXistenZ).

Having directed a couple short films in the early 2000s, she embarked on her debut feature, adapting a story by Nobel Prize-winning author (and fellow Canadian) Alice Munro. Away From Her (2006), about an elderly couple struggling with Alzheimer's disease, was a moderate box office success and a critical darling. It won 7 Genie (Canadian Academy) awards including Best Picture and Best Director, and also received Oscar nominations for actress Julie Christie and Polley's screenplay.

In 2007, when a local journalist was set to write a story based on a scandal involving Polley's family, she intervened and persuaded him to refrain from doing so. In tandem with her fathers' writing about the subject and conversations with her siblings, Polley decided it was time to turn the camera lens inward, and illustrate the domestic mystery she had first become aware of when she was 18.

Polley spent five years interviewing friends and family, deciding how she would structure the material to potential viewers, and editing the finished film. She was influenced by noteworthy atypical documentaries F For Fake (Orson Welles) and The Five Obstructions (Lars Von Trier), experimenting with form and various levels of reality. Thematically, Polley explores not only issues of family loyalty and trust, but the nature of storytelling itself, and how it effects the speaker as well as the listener.

The film was released to almost universal acclaim, winning awards at the Toronto Film Festival, Best Non-Fiction Film citations from the New York and Los Angeles film critics associations, and a Writer's Guild award for Best Documentary Screenplay. A 2015 poll saw it selected as one of the Top 10 Canadian Films of All Time.

Running time is approx. 100 minutes.