Atom Egoyan, (born July 19, 1960) is a critically acclaimed Armenian Canadian film maker, widely considered as one of the most remarkable figures of contemporary independent cinema.
He was born in Egypt to Armenian-Egyptian couple Joseph and Shushan Yeghoyan, and was named ‘Atom’ to commemorate the completion of Egypt’s first nuclear reactor! In 1963, however, his parents left Egypt for Canada, where they settled in Victoria, British Columbia and changed their last name to Egoyan.
He graduated from Trinity College at the University of Toronto, where he had studied Armenian History.
Egoyan’s works include roughly half a dozen full-length films, several television episodes, and a few shorter works. His early work was based on his own material. In 1991, The Adjuster, premiered at Cannes in the Quinzaine des Realisteurs, and also won the Special Jury Prize at the Moscow International Film Festival. He also received notice for the dark and mysterious film Exotica (1994). Exotica was at its time, the first English Canadian film to be invited into the competition at the Cannes Film Festival in nearly a decade, where it won the International Critics Prize for Best Film. After such a success, Exotica received a 500-screen U.S. release by Miramax Films.
However, it was not until Egoyan made his first attempt at adapted material that resulted in his best-known work, The Sweet Hereafter (1997) [image right], which landed him an Academy Award nomination for Best Director.
In 1999, Atom Egoyan was made an Officer of the Order of Canada.
Another film, Ararat (2002), which also premiered at Cannes gave Egoyan much publicity. Ararat was Egoyan reflection on the Armenian genocide of 1915. It was distributed in over 30 countries, wining numerous awards.
Four time winner at Cannes Film Festival and the most famous Armenian filmmaker since Sergei Parajanov, this Oscar-nominated master of indie cinema, generally explores themes of alienation and isolation, featuring characters whose interactions are mediated through technology, bureaucracy or other power structures. Much in accordance with the heritage of his style, his films often follow a non-linear structure, carefully crafted together.
In an interview with The Varsity Magazine, Canada, Egoyan reminisces:
When I started 25 years ago here on campus, there wasn’t really an independent Canadian film scene. Films were being made, but under the tax shelters provided by the Canadian government, and they were very commercially oriented. And here’s the thing, too: there wasn’t anything “cool” about making films at that point. I was one of the few people making films at the Hart House Film Board. It was difficult to get people involved and interested in filmmaking as a practice. It’s kind of weird to look at it now, because there are all these magazines about filmmaking, and all this culture around indie movies wasn’t there at all. In a way that was good, because on a practical level, you had access to the equipment: you didn’t have to line up, it was just sitting there on the shelf. There was a huge movement in student filmmaking in the ’70s, and that’s when all that equipment was purchased and set up. But by the early ’80s, that faded away, and the culture that I was graduating into was not particularly receptive to low-budget Canadian films. Today that’s totally changed, and I think with the advent of digital technology, those miniscule budgets that I made my first films for would actually be considered quite substantial today…
Beginning in September 2006, Egoyan started teaching at the University of Toronto for the following three years. He joined the faculty of arts and science as the dean’s distinguished visitor in theatre, film, music and visual studies.
Atom Egoyan currently resides in Toronto, Canada, with his family.
You can read a film review of one of his most intriguing films, Family Viewing, (which is at once a comment on voyeurism, digital media, popular culture, sexual fetishism, and well…family) right here.