Movie
The Sweet Hereafter
Drama film with a runtime of 113 minutes, released in 1997. Presented in English.
At a Glance
Synopsis
Atom Egoyan (Exotica) wrote and directed this Canadian film, an adaptation of the bestseller by Russell Banks (Continental Drift) about life in the small town of Sam Dent, British Columbia, where the crash of a packed schoolbus resulted in a tragic loss of young lives. The town struggles to come to terms with the children's deaths. Big-city lawyer Mitchell Stephens (Ian Holm), driven by his own demons, arrives in Sam Dent to prepare a class-action lawsuit, and an angry atmosphere of bitterness, recriminations, and emotions surfaces among the townspeople, including young crash survivor Nicole Burnell (Sarah Polley), schoolbus driver Dolores Driscoll (Gabrielle Rose), Dolores' wheelchair-bound husband (David Hemblen), a devastated father (Bruce Greenwood), and artist Wanda Otto (Arsinee Khanjian). Anger, accusations, doubts, and suspicions threaten to tear the community apart -- until one teenager looks for a way to reunite the town. Banks saw the town itself as a character: "There's no hero, just a community that embodies courage and volition, the moral values generally attributed to a leading character." Shown at the 1997 Cannes Festival.
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Cast
- Ian Holm
- Sarah Polley
- Bruce Greenwood
- Tom McCamus
- Arisnee Khanjian
- Alberta Watson
- Gabrielle Rose
- Maury Chaykin
- Brooke Johnson
- Earl Pastko
- David Hemblen
- Stephanie Morgenstern
- Caerthan Banks
- Kirsten Kieferle
- Sarah Rosen Fruitman
- Marc Donato
- Devon Finn
- Fides Krucker
- Magdalena Sokoloski
- Simon Baker
- James D. Watts
- Allegra Denton
- Peter Donaldson
- Russell Banks
- Tony Van Den Akker
- Paul Sarossy
- Sylvain Cournoyer
- Susan Shipton
- Phillip Barker
- Atom Egoyan
- Andras Hamori
- Dawn Rivard
- Ross Redfern
- Sue Conley
- Andy Malcolm
- Peter Kelly
- Beth Pasternak
- Kathleen Climie
- Steven Munro
- Goro Koyama
- David Webb
- Keith Elliott
- Daniel Pellerin
- Patricia Cuccia
- David Drainie Taylor
- Daniel Pellerin
- Peter Szkoda
- Robert Lantos
