General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20267 min read

Stories We Tell

Stories We Tell is a 2012 Canadian documentary directed by Sarah Polley in which she investigates a family secret: that her father, Michael Polley, was not her biological father, and that her mother, Diane Polley, who died of cancer when Sarah was eleven, had had an affair with her longtime friend Harry Gulkin.¹^•² Produced by Anita Lee for the National Film Board of Canada, the film runs 1 hour 48 minutes and premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2012.³^•⁴

Key fact	Detail
Director / writers	Sarah Polley; written by Sarah Polley and Michael Polley⁵
Production	National Film Board of Canada; producer Anita Lee, executive producer Silva Basmajian; 2012, 1 h 48 min³^•⁵
Central revelation	Harry Gulkin, a friend of Diane Polley, is Sarah Polley's biological father, confirmed by a DNA test²
Signature technique	Grainy "home movie" footage was actually staged and shot on Super 8 in the present day, with actress Rebecca Jenkins standing in for Diane; cinematographer Iris Ng²
Major awards	Best Non-Fiction Film from the New York Film Critics Circle; Documentary Screenplay from the Writers Guild of America; Best Documentary from the Los Angeles Film Critics; Allan King Documentary Award from the Toronto Film Critics Association (2012)³^•⁵
Critical reception	94% on Rotten Tomatoes (145 reviews); Metascore 91 on Metacritic based on 36 critic reviews⁶^•⁷
Box office	$1.6 million in the United States; just over $3 million worldwide⁶^•⁸

Spoilers

The story the film investigates

Sarah Polley, the youngest of five children, was eleven years old when her mother Diane died of cancer in 1990.¹^•⁹ Diane was an actress who appeared on local Toronto television and in theater, and the film opens with Michael Polley, Sarah's father, narrating the story of meeting Diane, another young theater actor, marrying her, and raising a family as the relationship grew strained.¹⁰^•²

The secret. Family jokes and rumors that Sarah did not resemble Michael had circulated since her childhood, and whispers pointed to an affair Diane may have had when she briefly lived in Montreal in the 1970s.² In 2007, while Polley was on set in Montreal shooting a scene for the film Mr. Nobody, a friend warned her that a journalist had discovered the information she had kept secret for a year. She persuaded the journalist not to print it, flew to Toronto that night, and told her father the news, which a DNA test with a man she had met a year earlier had confirmed.⁴ In the film, Harry Gulkin, her mother's old friend, confesses that he is her biological father and later proves it with the DNA test.²

Michael Polley's response shaped the film. Shocked but not angry, his chief concern was that his children not blame their mother; he was candid about his own lack of responsiveness toward her, and then he began to write, producing a written account of the marriage, the affair, and his relationship with Sarah.⁴ His narration frames the film, and he is credited as co-writer alongside his daughter.⁵

Form and technique

The film interviews family members and friends of varying reliability, including Diane's children Mark, Joanna, Susy, and John, and elicits candid but mostly contradictory answers to the same questions.⁵^•² Polley is both filmmaker and detective, an active participant as interviewer and subject, and the film is generally discussed in relation to the participatory and reflexive modes of documentary.¹¹

The staged archive is the film's central device. Much of the grainy 8 mm footage that appears to show Diane and the family in the past was in fact created for the film: Polley and cinematographer Iris Ng staged fake home movies in the present day, shot on Super 8, with the blonde woman audiences take for Diane being actress Rebecca Jenkins in period clothing, recreating scenes from family photos and Polley's imagination.² Once this fabrication is revealed, viewers no longer know which images to trust, which is the point Polley intended: the New Yorker noted that the footage seems so profuse and oddly convenient that audiences begin questioning their own assumptions, exactly what Polley had in mind.¹²

The film also stages a debate about who has the right to tell Diane's story. Harry believed that, as the person directly involved, only he had that right; Polley disagreed, holding that the whole family should be heard with each perspective given equal weight. Michael reminded her that whoever tells the story will produce a flawed version of the truth.² Polley herself said the impetus for the film was how many stories, contradictions, and complementary details came out of the single secret, and how common it is for members of the same family to hold different versions of the same events.¹⁰

Production

Stories We Tell took five years to make and was Polley's first feature-length documentary, her seventh film as director, after the narrative features Away from Her (2006) and Take This Waltz.²^•⁸^•¹ Polley said directing her first nonfiction project was "like learning how to make a film from scratch," and that the loss of control inherent in documentary was foreign to her after two narrative features; she joined the inaugural Canadian Film Centre/National Film Board Documentary Program in 2009, which gave her structure and mentors including Wim Wenders and Kevin McMahon.¹³ She has said that making the film was the hardest thing she had ever done and that at times she felt she should stop for mental health reasons.¹⁰

The film was funded by the National Film Board of Canada, the national body that has supported Canadian documentary since the 1930s.¹⁴ It was selected at eight festivals worldwide, including Venice, Telluride, and TIFF.³ Roadside Attractions released it in the United States on May 10, 2013, in limited theaters.⁶

Reception and awards

Critics received the film as both a family mystery and an inquiry into documentary form. It holds 94% on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer from 145 reviews, with a critics consensus that Polley "plays with the documentary format to explore the nature of memory and storytelling," and a Metascore of 91 on Metacritic, rated "Universal Acclaim" from 36 critic reviews.⁶^•⁷ Ann Hornaday of The Washington Post called it a masterful film on technical and aesthetic values alone, one that rises further because of the wisdom and compassion of its maker.⁷

Awards. The film won Best Documentary from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and Best Non-Fiction Film from the New York Film Critics Circle, along with the Writers Guild of America Award for Documentary Screenplay, the Rogers Best Canadian Film Award and Allan King Documentary Award from the Toronto Film Critics Association, and the Ted Rogers prize for best feature documentary at the Canadian Screen Awards, among other honors; IMDb records 25 wins and 44 nominations.³^•⁵^•¹⁵ Despite the awards, it was not nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.¹⁶

Legacy

The film is frequently cited as a reference point for autobiographical documentary that blends reenactment with archive. It has been listed among Canada's documentary essentials, appeared on the Toronto International Film Festival's all-time top ten Canadian films list, and is described in film-studies teaching materials as one of the most successful Canadian films of all time.²^•¹⁴ Later filmmakers name it as an inspiration: the director of A Photographic Memory listed Polley's film, alongside Chris Marker's La Jetée and Jonathan Caouette's Tarnation, among her influences for a personal documentary built from fragments of memory.¹⁷ Scholars have read the film's visible fabrication as raising questions about the role of the archive in documentary about family trauma, treating Polley's investigation itself as an archival document.¹⁸

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Films by genre, form, and subject › Documentary and biographical films › Documentary films by subject: people, identity, and communities

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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