Katherine Waterston and Vanessa Kirby star as two lonely frontier women who find solace in each other in this gentle and unfussy drama from Norwegian-born director Mona Fastvold.
Adapted by Jim Shepard and Ron Hansen from Shepard’s own 2017 short story by the same name, The World To Come also stars Casey Affleck (Manchester By The Sea, A Ghost Story) and Christopher Abbott (It Comes at Night, Possessor) as the women’s respective husbands.
In 1850s Schoharie County, New York, Waterston is Abigail, a young married woman mourning the recent death of her infant daughter. Consumed by grief, Abigail has stopped going to church and spends most of her days buried in her thoughts which she sometimes transfers onto daily journal entries. Meanwhile, her marriage to taciturn farmer Dyer (Affleck, faultless in his trademark “man of a few words” delivery) is slowly falling apart, amidst the upcoming winter freeze threatening their livelihood.
