Revisiting a family secret through interviews and home movies, Stories we Tell uses personal experience to explore questions of love, family, memory, and storytelling. Director Sarah Polley’s patchwork of family videos and voiceover narration resurrects her deceased mother and examines the family’s memories of an extramarital affair, bringing to light Polley’s struggle to comprehend the motivations, thoughts, and actions of another. This film questions the creation of life narratives, compares versions of stories told and retold, and asks whether giving equal merit to all memories and stories results in a fuller picture of truth. This interrogation—of the possibility of truth in storytelling and of the documentary creation process itself—ultimately highlights the fictional aspects of memory and the problematic creation of personal narrative.