The ensemble cast includes Ian Holm, Sarah Polley, Maury Chaykin, Bruce Greenwood, Tom McCamus, Gabrielle Rose, Arsinée Khanjian and Alberta Watson.

In the small town of Sam Dent, British Columbia, a school bus hits a patch of ice, runs through a barrier and crashes into a lake, killing 14 children.

The case depends on coaching the few surviving witnesses to say the right things in court, particularly Nicole Burnell, a 15-year-old paralyzed from the waist down as a result of the accident.

One bereft parent, Billy Ansel, distrusts Stephens and pressures Sam to drop the case; Nicole overhears their argument.

The Canadian director Atom Egoyan adapted the screenplay after his wife, the actress Arsinée Khanjian, suggested he read Russell Banks' The Sweet Hereafter.

[9] He also added references to the story of The Pied Piper of Hamelin by Robert Browning, to emphasize how Egoyan saw The Sweet Hereafter as a "grim fairy tale.

Egoyan wrote a new stanza in the Pied Piper style for the scene in which Nicole testifies Dolores was speeding, in which she describes her father's lips as "frozen as the winter moon.

[4] Egoyan assembled many Canadian actors he had worked with in prior films, including Bruce Greenwood, Gabrielle Rose and Sarah Polley.

"[6] Ian Holm was cast as Mitchell Stephens after the actor originally set to play the character, Donald Sutherland, quit the project.

[17] The Pied Piper references influenced the composer Mychael Danna's music, which uses a Persian ney flute along with old instruments such as recorders, crumhorns and lutes,[18] creating "a pseudo-medieval score"[19] which was performed by the Toronto Consort, conducted by David Fallis.

"[35] The Writers Guild of Canada commented that The Sweet Hereafter and contemporary Canadian films "never succeeded in scoring a home run at the international box office.

"[42] Janet Maslin, writing for The New York Times, said "this fusion of Mr. Banks's and Mr. Egoyan's sensibilities stands as a particularly inspired mix", with Sarah Polley and Bruce Greenwood "particularly good here".

[43] Brendan Kelly of Variety praised The Sweet Hereafter as "Egoyan's most ambitious work to date", and as "a rich, complex meditation on the impact of a terrible tragedy on a small town", adding Polley and Tom McCamus are "excellent".

[44] Entertainment Weekly gave the film an A, saying it "puts you in a rapturous emotional daze", and calling it a "hymn to the agony of loss" and "a new kind of mystical fairy tale, one that seeks to uncover the forces holding the world together, even as they tear it apart.

"[45] Paul Tatara of CNN called The Sweet Hereafter "devastating" and wrote Ian Holm gives "the performance of his hugely impressive career.

[50] In 2011, British director Clio Barnard praised the "real depth" and "healthy ambiguity" of the story and described Holm and Polley as "brilliant", giving "powerful, subtle performances".