This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2013, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
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