The Sweet Hereafter

A small mountain community in Canada is devastated when a school bus accident leaves more than a dozen of its children dead. A big-city lawyer (Ian Holm) arrives to help the survivors’ and victims’ families prepare a class-action suit, but his efforts only seem to push the townspeople further apart. At the same time, one teenage survivor of the accident (Sarah Polley) has to reckon with the loss of innocence brought about by a different kind of damage.

One of the most honoured Canadian films of all time, Atom Egoyan’s The Sweet Hereafter (1997) was nominated for 16 Genie Awards and won eight, including best picture, director and actor. It also won three major awards at the Cannes Film Festival, and received Academy Award nominations for adapted screenplay and director. Widely regarded as one of the greatest Canadian films ever made, it was voted the best Canadian film of all time in a Playback readers’ poll in 2002, and ranked in the top five in polls of the Top 10 Canadian films of all time conducted by the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) in 2004 and 2015. It was named one of 150 essential works in Canadian cinema history in a similar poll in 2016.