$18,262 in foreign markets for a total worldwide box office of $337,617. Critical reception On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 60% based on 80 reviews with an average rating of 6.4/10. The site's critical consensus is "A deliberately paced, realistic portrait of a family's grief and healing." Dana Stevens of The New York Times called the film "the kind of ambling, event-free family drama that will either draw audiences in with its gentle, understated power or quietly bore them out of their skulls." Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times observed, "The movie is not plot-driven, for which we must be thankful, because to force their feelings into a plot would be a form of cruelty. The whole point is that these lives have no plot. The characters and their situation are on stage and waiting for something to happen, but Josh Sternfeld, the writer-director, isn't going to let them off that easily. If this movie ended in hugs, it would be an abomination . . . Sternfeld . . . knows he will have more effect on us if he denies us closure." Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle called the film "a completely boring, counterfeit movie" and added, "Because everyone in Winter Solstice is miserable, because everyone is sensitive, because nothing happens, because people smile through tears and tear through smiles, and because there isn't a single explosion or car chase, there will be people who'll insist that this film is a searing examination of the human soul. In fact, it's dreadful, but it's a special kind of dreadful - the kind designed to appeal to intelligent people on principle . . . The film's depiction of middle-aged grief is antiseptic and uninformed, and its depiction of middle-aged bonding is trite and unreal." David Rooney of Variety called the film an "accomplished debut for writer-director Josh Sternfeld . . . distinguished by its emotional integrity, sustained mood of aching melancholy and superbly understated performances." He added, "Relatively little happens in Sternfeld's screenplay, the rewards of which lie in its intelligent refusal to offer artificial, clean solutions or to broadcast the characters' conflicts in big, showy scenes. Instead, the writer-director coaxes out their fear, bitterness, hostility and sorrow through small revelations or telling silences." DVD release The Region 1 DVD was released on September 13, 2005. The film is in anamorphic widescreen format