With Sarah Polley‘s first documentary, the autobiographical Stories We Tell premiering at the Venice Film Festival this week and starting to make its festival rounds, it’s only appropriate that the production’s first trailer has arrived. The doc was first teased as centering on a “family of storytellers” and the way they all communicate and interpret the same shared stories – enticing enough, and all the more so when Polley revealed just yesterday that both the family and the story were her own.
The film’s first trailer adeptly obscures the ostensible heart of its own subject matter (which Polley blogged about yesterday), instead tantalizing us with the promise of revealing a look at Polley’s mother’s entire life by way of lots of archival footage (her mother was also an actress) and interviews with much of her family, including Polley’s own father and siblings. It is, at turns, funny (Polley directing her own father is a sweet and amusing way to reveal her involvement), sad (her siblings remember the passing of their mother in very personal ways), and intriguing (just what is that thing they’ve all joked about that proves true?). But what’s really most compelling about this brief first look is Polley herself, sitting quietly in a chair, having taking a time out from an interview that’s clearly proved too hard to handle, head in her hands. It’s a tiny moment, but enormously moving. Check out the first trailer for Stories We Tell after the break.
The film has just premiered at the Venice Film Festival to so far wonderful reviews. It will next play at Telluride this weekend and Toronto in September. [THR, via /Film]