Ken Woroner | courtesy Sundance Institute An image from Sarah Polley's documentary "Stories We Tell," playing in the Spotlight section of the 2013 Sundance Film Festival.

The trailer for “Stories We Tell” — which played the Venice/Telluride/Toronto festival circuit in September and arrives next month to the 2013 Sundance Film Festival — begins with a resonant voice, sounding quite wise: “When you’re in the middle of a story, it isn’t a story at all, but only a confusion, a dark roaring, a blindness. It’s only afterwards that it becomes anything like a story, when you’re telling it to yourself or anybody else.”

Then the director’s voice comes over the studio intercom, asking the man — her father — to repeat the last part of the line.

There’s a fascinating juxtaposition of mystery and familiarity in the trailer, which shows director/writer Sarah Polley (the Canadian actress who starred in “The Sweet Hereafter” and the “Dawn of the Dead” remake) unraveling family secrets — many of them centered around her mother.

“Stories We Tell” screens in the Spotlight section of the 2013 Sundance Film Festival.

- Sean P. Means