#27—The Sweet Hereafter, feat. Abdul Malik

Sweater Weather

Screenwriter Abdul Malik (Peace by Chocolate, CTV’s Transplant) joins us to talk about Atom Egoyan’s 1997 film, The Sweet Hereafter, one of Canada’s most celebrated movies and the pinnacle of the Toronto New Wave moment. We revisit the melancholic, majestic, and morally compromised town of Sam Dent, a fictional community in BC’s interior that has lost almost all its children to a school-bus crash. Ian Holm plays a carpet-bagging lawyer with his own emotional baggage, while Sarah Polley portrays a young girl who survives both the bus accident and her father’s abuse. In this stark winter landscape, we warm to Egoyan's elegant filmmaking but are left cold by his moralizing vision. Should The Sweet Hereafter still be celebrated 25 years later?

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