Snow Falling on Cedars

Set in the 1950s on a small fishing island in the Pacific Northwest, the film centres on the trial of Kazuo Miyamoto, a Japanese-American fisherman accused of killing a fellow fisherman, Carl Heine, whose body was found tangled in his nets with a head wound. The case divides the island's white and Japanese-American communities, still shadowed by the memory of the Second World War and the internment of local Japanese-American families.

Ishmael Chambers, a young reporter covering the trial for the local paper, has a personal stake in the proceedings: the defendant's wife, Hatsue, was his first love, a relationship that ended when she and her family were sent to an internment camp. As Ishmael follows the testimony and makes inquiries of his own, he is forced to reckon with his past and with evidence that bears on the case.

Scott Hicks directed and co-wrote the screenplay with Ronald Bass, following his earlier Shine; Kathleen Kennedy, Frank Marshall and Bass produced. Ethan Hawke plays Ishmael, with Youki Kudoh as Hatsue, Rick Yune as Kazuo and Max von Sydow among the credited cast of 57. Made for about 35 million dollars, the film drew modest audience scores, 6.7 on IMDb from around 15,000 votes and 6.1 on TMDB from a much smaller sample, while its critics' rating of 6.2 from 89 reviews sits between the two.