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Atom Egoyan
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Cairo-born, Canadian-bred and of Armenian descent, Atom Egoyan is one of the most celebrated contemporary filmmakers on the international scene. Through his uniquely personal feature films and numerous related projects, he has created a remarkable body of work that has received both critical acclaim and commercial success around the world. Egoyan was raised in Victoria, BC, moving to Toronto at age 18 to study International Relations and classical guitar at the University of Toronto. It was there that he began to seriously explore the art and language of the cinema, and started making his own films which progressed to reflect his own, very personal thematic obsessions, delving into issues of intimacy, displacement and the impact of technology and media in modern life. His debut feature, Next of Kin (1984) earned Egoyan the Genie nomination (Canadian Academy Award) for Best Director, and went on to win Germany's Mannheim International Film Week Gold Ducat Award, receiving theatrical distribution around the world. Family Viewing (1987) won the Locarno International Critics Prize, and was nominated for eight Genie Awards including Best Film.
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As a resident of Canada since the age of three, who was born in Egypt to parents of Armenian ancestry, Atom Egoyan is a most suitable subject for the British Film Institute’s excellent series on World Directors. From his first feature, Next of Kin (1984), to his most recent work, Ararat (2002), Egoyan has set his films in a wide variety of locations around the world, and has demonstrated an extraordinary ability to address with intelligence and flair what might be termed global issues: history, memory, ritual, identity, privacy, grief, illusions, and signs.
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Since the modest release of his very first feature film, Next Of Kin, in 1984, Atom Egoyan has built an impresssive body of work. Along the way he has established a reputation as a well-liked director with very focused working habits. A recurring theme in his movies, particularly apparent in his early work, is the relationship between technology and emotional isolation. Another undercurrent is the fragile nature of family bonds. As broad as these themes may be, Atom Egoyan has willfully maintained a Canadian context for his work. Indeed, the growth of the Canadian film industry has paralleled his own personal successes in this field.
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, Atom Egoyan, voyeurism lurks everywhere, cataloguing existence, replicating reality, reducing human beings to digital fragments. He fills his minimal scripts with visual metaphors and carries them from one work to the next, often using technology to create a cold, calculated ambiance. Egoyan, much like Resnais, forces viewers to approach his films like detectives, piecing the narrative from broken fragments. In certain ways, Egoyan takes Resnais’s concerns further — or brings them up to date. On the other hand, Egoyan’s work doesn’t seem to have the focus on literature, or on the relationship between cinema and literature. Instead, Egoyan focuses on television and other media.
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Ararat is a 2002 film directed, written, and co-produced by Atom Egoyan about the Armenian Genocide, an event that is denied by the government of Turkey. In addition to exploring the human impact of the specific historical event, the film ... examines the nature of truth and its representation through art. Ararat stars Charles Aznavour, Christopher Plummer, and David Alpay.
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Born in Cairo to Armenian parents who immigrated to Canada in 1962, Atom Egoyan was acutely aware that he and his family were unusual in the very English west-coast city of Victoria. Like the children of most immigrants, he wanted nothing more than to learn to speak English and assimilate as quickly as possible.
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Atom Egoyan