Skip to main content
Filmarian
All films
Poster for The Sweet Hereafter
Sign in to rateBe the first to rate
+ write a review
Released
1997 · FILM

The Sweet Hereafter

A determined city attorney arrives in a grieving mountain town to unite families in a class‑action lawsuit after a tragic school bus crash, only to find his pursuit of justice tearing the community apart and forcing everyone to confront their deepest losses.

“There is no such thing as the simple truth.”

Directed by
Atom Egoyan
Written by
Atom Egoyan, Russell Banks
Rated
MPA · R
Runtime
112 min
Drama
Streaming on
  • The Criterion Channel

Synopsis

A small mountain community in Canada is devastated when a school bus accident results in the deaths of more than a dozen children. A lawyer from the city arrives to assist the families of the victims and survivors in preparing a class-action lawsuit, but his efforts appear to deepen divisions among the townspeople. Meanwhile, one teenage survivor must come to terms with the loss of innocence caused by a different kind of trauma.

Credits

Actors
Editor
Production Designer
Director of Photography
Writers
Director

Related titles

No curated related titles yet. Use the edit affordance to add "More from this director", "Same franchise", or "Adaptation source material" entries — every change goes through the wiki review queue.

How many hands made this film

The scale of the collaboration

Principal cast & crew: 17

These are the principals we have on file — the full crew ran to the hundreds. Every film this size was made by far more hands than any credits list ever names.

Why a floor?

This is a minimum, not a total. We only count the credits we’ve captured so far, and coverage is uneven — a blockbuster might show a few hundred names while another of the same size shows a couple dozen. The real crews all ran into the thousands. The number here only grows as full credits are enriched — so we frame it as a floor, never a headcount.

Craft leads on file

Edited by Susan ShiptonShot by Paul SarossyScored by Mychael DannaDesigned by Phillip Barker

Box Office

1997 · Box office

⚖️ Fell short of break-even — grossed 1.6× its budget

Why 2.5×?

Cinemas keep roughly half of every ticket sold, and a wide release’s marketing often costs about as much again as the film — so a movie needs to gross around 2.5× its production budget just to break even theatrically. It’s a rule of thumb, not the studio’s ledger (home video and streaming come later).

Worldwide gross

$8.0M

Budget$5.0M
Worldwide gross$8.0M
break-even (2.5×)

US & Canada: $3.3M — 41% of worldwide · International: $4.7M (59%)

Opening weekend: $31K — 1% of its US run. It had legs — it kept earning long after opening weekend.

Peak 2 theaters

Also known as

  • Das süsse Jenseitsde
  • Das süße Jenseitsde
  • El dulce porvenires
  • De beaux lendemainsfr
  • Il dolce domaniit

Community tags

Be the first to tag this page — tags appear right away. Try a theme, capability, or subject (e.g. WWII, heist, slow burn, time travel, A24).