The Sweet Hereafter
Atom Egoyan pieces together the shards of a tragedy that has left a community shattered in this ethereal, emotionally arresting film, an Oscar-nominated adaptation of the Russell Banks novel. Drifting between past and present, The Sweet Hereafter offers an intimate panorama of a snowbound Canadian town reckoning with the fallout of a school-bus crash that claimed the lives of fourteen children—a fresh wound that’s further inflamed when a big-city lawyer, who is contending with his own personal tragedy, arrives to assemble a lawsuit on behalf of the victims’ families. Achieving an almost incantatory intensity through the mesmerizing performances of an ensemble cast led by Ian Holm and Sarah Polley, this winner of the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival is a devastatingly clear-eyed vision of the ways in which trauma can ripple through our lives.
DIRECTOR-APPROVED 4K UHD + BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
- New 4K digital restoration supervised and approved by director Atom Egoyan, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
- One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
- Two audio commentaries, one from 1998 featuring Egoyan and author Russell Banks, and the other from 2012 featuring Egoyan
- New interview with Egoyan
- Interview with Egoyan and actor Sarah Polley
- “Egoyan to the Oscars,” a 1998 segment from the Canadian television program The National
- Episode of the Criterion Channel series Observations on Film Art about the use of associative editing, featuring scholar Jeff Smith
- Isolated track featuring Mychael Danna's score
- Trailers
- English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- PLUS: An essay by critic César Albarrán-Torres and an introduction by Egoyan
New cover by Anthony Gerace, featuring photography by Johnnie Eisen
DIRECTOR-APPROVED 4K UHD + BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
- New 4K digital restoration supervised and approved by director Atom Egoyan, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
- One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
- Two audio commentaries, one from 1998 featuring Egoyan and author Russell Banks, and the other from 2012 featuring Egoyan
- New interview with Egoyan
- Interview with Egoyan and actor Sarah Polley
- “Egoyan to the Oscars,” a 1998 segment from the Canadian television program The National
- Episode of the Criterion Channel series Observations on Film Art about the use of associative editing, featuring scholar Jeff Smith
- Isolated track featuring Mychael Danna's score
- Trailers
- English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- PLUS: An essay by critic César Albarrán-Torres and an introduction by Egoyan
New cover by Anthony Gerace, featuring photography by Johnnie Eisen
Cast
- Ian Holm
- Mitchell Stephens
- Maury Chaykin
- Wendell Walker
- Peter Donaldson
- Schwartz
- Bruce Greenwood
- Billy Adsel
- David Hemblen
- Abbott Driscoll
- Brooke Johnson
- Mary Burnell
- Arsinée Khanjian
- Wanda Otto
- Tom McCamus
- Sam Burnell
- Stephanie Morgenstern
- Allison O’Donnell
- Earl Pastko
- Hartley Otto
- Sarah Polley
- Nicole Burnell
- Gabrielle Rose
- Dolores Driscoll
- Alberta Watson
- Risa Walker
Credits
- Director
- Atom Egoyan
- Producer
- Atom Egoyan
- Producer
- Camelia Frieberg
- Associate producer
- David Webb
- Line producer
- Sandra Cunningham
- Executive producer
- Andras Hamori
- Executive producer
- Robert Lantos
- Screenplay by
- Atom Egoyan
- Based on the novel by
- Russell Banks
- Director of photography
- Paul Sarossy
- Editor
- Susan Shipton
- Production designer
- Phillip Barker
- Costume designer
- Beth Pasternak
- Sound design
- Steve Munro
- Composer
- Mychael Danna
A scene from The Sweet Hereafter
