Marion Bridge

Three sisters confront their painful pasts in first-time director Wiebke von Carolsfeld's small but beautifully acted drama, adapted from his own play by actor Daniel MacIvor. With their hard-drinking, chain-smoking mother, Rose (Marguerite McNeil) at death's door, her daughters Theresa (Rebecca Jenkins), Louise (Stacy Smith) and Agnes (Molly Parker) gather in the family's small-town home in Sydney, on Nova Scotia's Cape Breton island. Two of the siblings never strayed far from where they were raised. Theresa, the eldest, has been dumped by her husband but still harbors vain hopes that they can reconcile — even though he's moved another women into the house he a...