80
This playfully complex and gently slippery analysis of memory and personal narrative manages to engage us in what's essentially the private business, some might even say the dirty laundry, of total strangers.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
75
Film.com by Amanda May Meyncke
This funny and touching film could do with a bit of editing. It tends to drag a bit, especially near the end, and though we’re privy to the thoughts and feelings of Polley’s family, we’re given scant verbalized insight into her own thinking.
90
New York Magazine (Vulture) by David Edelstein
So Polley has gone meta — exuberantly, entertainingly, with all her heart.
100
Stories We Tell marks the finest of Polley's filmmaking skills by blending intimacy and intrigue to remarkable effect.
80
The alternately playful and elegiac Stories We Tell is wholly of a piece with her fiction work, and just as rewarding.
100
Polley has gone further into the thorny subject of forgiveness than any of her peers. Her movies ache with ethical quandary; Stories We Tell aches the most.
91
The Playlist by Oliver Lyttelton
Fans of Polley’s work to date will be delighted by a documentary that serves simultaneously as a gripping mystery, a moving record of a family and a fascinating investigation into the nature of truth, memory, and the documentary form itself.
100
The Guardian by Peter Bradshaw
Polley tackles painful issues with candour and tact. She has a gripping tale to tell. It's a film that raises questions about the ownership of memory and ownership of narrative.
75
McClatchy-Tribune News Service by Roger Moore
It goes on too long, but this is personal essay filmmaking at its best, one that passes that ultimate test of such self-involved projects. It has a story worth telling.