“Who cares about our stupid family?”

That’s a question asked of Canadian director Sarah Polley by one of her siblings early on in her new documentary, Stories We Tell.

One group cares plenty, enough to award Polley a $100,000 prize. The Toronto Film Critics Association awarded the director the Rogers Best Canadian Film Award last night at their annual gala. The film is currently screening at the Bloor Hot Docs Cinema in Toronto.

I was at the film’s Canadian premiere at TIFF in September. Her family was all herded up on stage with the thirty-four-year-old Polley. Watching their faces, I imagined what was going through their heads after seeing their family’s history splayed on screen for the world to behold. Polley’s film is a profoundly personal story revealing a family secret.

In 2006, Polley discovered she was the product of an affair. She hoped to keep it a secret. A year later, a friend told her a journalist was onto the story. Polley concluded she had to say to this story, her story, in her own words.

The result is a technically brilliant film; a series of family interviews and super-8 home movies of her parents, especially her mother, casting agent/actress Diane Polley, who died of cancer when Sarah was eleven, also throughout: bits and pieces of her father, actor Michael Polley, reading to the camera from his memoir after he discovered that he was not Polley’s biological father.

Polley pulls all these elements together like a cool therapist. In a blog posting before the TIFF screening, the director wrote that the film tormented her during the five years it took to complete, yet she remained driven by her search to discover how legend becomes truth in family histories.

“Whatever my feelings are about the events that are outlined, about the many dynamic and complicated players or the stunning, vibrant woman my mother was, they are ephemeral, constantly out of my grasp, they change as the years pass. (I declined to use a “voice of God” first-person voice-over narration because it felt false, self-involved, and besides the point). But I found I could lose myself in the words of the people closest to me. I can feel, hear, and see their histories, and I wanted to get lost, immerse myself in those words, and be a detective in my own life and family. Anything I want to say about this part of my life is said in the film. It’s a search still, a search for meaning, truth, for whether there can ever be a truth.”

Also on the blog was this from Polley:

Personal documentaries have always made me a bit squeamish.

Squeamish…ah, yes. While I admit to being lured into the unfolding, I couldn’t shake off the Too Much Information vibe. Are some secrets sacred to family vaults? Like Polley, I have four siblings who know all about divided storytelling. Just about any story can be disputed by one of us as inaccurate. We view the world through a particular lens; our memories are framed in various tints. What Polley has attempted is to showcase the rainbow. I applaud that, and yet, I wanted to hear her thoughts. Unfortunately, the aloof tone was ultimately what left me hanging.

Other film bits:

• Razzie award nominations are out for worst pics of 2012, and leading the nominations is Breaking Dawn Part 2. So it’s true. Vampires do suck.

• Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln scooped the most BAFTA nominations today, but there will be no top Brit honour for Spielberg himself as he was shut out of nominations for best director. Maybe he’ll feel better Thursday morning when Oscar nominations are announced.

More on film:

• Why TIFF? 

• My Faves of TIFF 2012

• First, look, but can it soar at Christmas?

• The most heroic thing

• Dark controversy

More on family:

• Thanksgiving Pulse

• Girl Dad

• I LOVE LUCY…most of the time.