CINEOS Premiere
Stories We Tell
A filmmaker turns the camera on her own family to solve the mystery of her mother, then reveals that some of the home movies she's been showing you were staged all along.
The tone is warm and the storytellers are funny and open, so the discomfort is never in your body — it arrives as waves of re-evaluation, each new voice quietly rewriting what you thought you knew. Its central move, revealing that the archive you trusted was invented, works on you long after it ends, sending you back to your own family photos with new suspicion. The film's generosity toward an unknowable woman turns grief into something closer to an act of love.
Related Paths
FAQ
Is it a real documentary?
Partly, and that's the whole game. Some of what looks like old footage was shot for this film and passed off as archive — a deception it eventually confesses, so that trusting any record again feels different afterward.
Do I need to know Sarah Polley?
Not at all. It's a family story first — a mother, a secret, several people who loved her and can't agree on her — and the questions it raises about truth and memory belong to everyone.