STORIES WE TELL
"The film's editor, Mike Munn, deserves applause. This was an immense amount of material to put together, yet the story never flags. You might find yourself getting so caught up in it, you could be forgiven for thinking you’re watching dramatic fiction."
- Peter Howell, The Toronto Star
"...on second viewing I could fully appreciate the brilliant structure Polley and editor Mike Munn employ to build their series of
shattering emotional revelations...
The year's best film, Canadian or otherwise. NNNNN”
- Norm Wilner, Now Magazine
" Stories We Tell will make you cry, as it's a masterful work using interviews with family and recreations like we've rarely seen. It's greatest genius, though, is in the editing; audiences are carried through the film's many twists and turns effortlessly."
- Tom Roston, POV
"…thanks to Polley and Munn’s observant storytelling and judicious editing, what unfolds is a riveting drama that grows even more so as it plays out…With it’s ingenious structure, seamless visual conceits, and mordant humour, Stories We Tell is a masterful film on technical and aesthetic values alone."
- Anne Hornaday, The Washington Post
“I loved Sarah Polley’s film Stories We Tell. It’s an ingenious way of combining documentary-styled storytelling with narrative fiction...
The reconciliation of the documentary form with the fiction film form seems very exciting to me."
- Francis Ford Coppola, director, quoted in Variety
"One of the great pleasures of this remarkable film is that it’s surprises never stop, even when you’re sure you’ve seen them all, it’s stories grow deeper and gain complexity."
- Kenneth Turan, The Los Angeles Times
SELECTED AWARDS
Canadian Screen Award, Best Documentary
Directors Guild of Canada, Allan King Award for Best Documentary
Toronto Film Critics, Best Documentary and Best Canadian Feature
New York Film Critics, Best Documentary
Los Angeles Film Critics, Best Documentary
National Board of Review, Best Documentary
Canada's All Time Top Ten List, Toronto International Film Festival
Canada's All Time Top Ten List, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
Short-listed for Best Feature Documentary Oscar
"Stories We Tell is a work of art that stays with the viewer long after you have seen it. In fact, the film is so well crafted and so wonderfully complex that the viewer will want to watch it again and again."
- David Thomson, The New Republic
“Stories We Tell finds a dazzling and difficult poise, between obfuscation and epiphany…"
- Anthony Lane, The New Yorker
"A fascinating journey, impeccably crafted."
- Dan Jolin, Empire Magazine
"Stories We Tell is so ingeniously constructed—and so nakedly intimate—that it may be a watershed."
- Stephanie Zacharek, The Village Voice
"It's a brilliant film: an enthralling, brilliantly layered masterpiece of memoir that unravels an extraordinary world of family secrets through a maze of interviews, home movies, and faux home movies cast with actors."
- Brian D. Johnson, Maclean's Magazine
"Sarah Polley's fascinating documentary, Stories We Tell, experiments with the expected narrative structures, pushing us to consider not just the meaning of stories but how the way we tell the story can change its impact." - Sheila O'Malley, Roger Ebert.com
"Polley has her brilliant way with the elusiveness of truth.
The result, with its flashing perspectives and stealthy wit,
is unique and unforgettable."
- Peter Travers, Rolling Stone
"Stories We Tell — the probing, emotionally devastating documentary that was, for this critic and many others, the revelation of the first week of the Venice Film Festival… Polley has transformed the secrets and lies of her own life into glowing artistic truth."
- Mary Corliss, Time Magazine