Atom Egoyan

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 critical acclaim and achieved commercial success around the world. He has won numerous prizes at international film festivals including the Grand Prix and International Critics Awards from the Cannes Film Festival and two Academy Award® nominations for The Sweet Hereafter. With early films such as Speaking Parts, The Adjuster and Exotica, Egoyan delves into issues of intimacy, displacement, and the impact of technology and media in modern life. These themes are further explored in works throughout his career.

Ararat, Egoyan's meditation on the Armenian Genocide of 1915, was distributed in over thirty countries. It won several awards, including Best Film on Human Rights by the Political Film Society of Hollywood, and the Freedom of Expression Award from the National Board of Review in New York. Egoyan's adaptations have also received critical praise, films such as Felicia's Journey and Where The Truth Lies, which was honoured at the 2006 Frankfurt Book Fair with a prize for Best International Literary Film Adaptation. Egoyan's films have been presented in numerous retrospectives across the globe, including a complete career overview at the Pompidou Centre in Paris in 2007.

A number of books have been written about his work, and he co-edited a collection of essays, SUBTITLES on the foreignness of film, published by MIT press in 2004. Egoyan's installations have been exhibited at museums and galleries in Canada and abroad, including the Venice Biennale.

Egoyan has earned many exceptional honours in his career. He was President of the Jury at the 2003 Berlin Film Festival, and has served on juries in Cannes, Venice, Sundance, and Toronto. He was knighted by the French Government with the Chevalier des Arts et Lettres, has received the Anahid Literary Award from the Armenian Center at Columbia University, and was inducted into the Order of Canada. He has received honourary doctorates from universities across Canada, and in May, 2008, was presented with the Dan David Prize for Creative Rendering of the Past, a category he shares with Amos Oz and Tom Stoppard.

Adoration, Egoyan's film, won the Ecumenical Jury Prize at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival and was released by Sony Pictures Classics.

Egoyan has also produced a body of work in television and threatre. His production of Wagner's Die Walküre was performed by the Canadia Opera Company in April 2004 and remounted in Autumn 2006 with the opening of the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts in Toronto winning the Dora Award for Outstanding Production. On the occasion of the Samuel Beckett's Centenary Celebration in 2006, Egoyan's critically acclaimed interpretation of Beckett's Eh Joe was presented by The Gate Theatre in Dublin. This production, starring Michael Gambon, earned Egoyan The Irish Times/ESB Award for Best Direction, and later transferred to London's West End. It was remounted with Liam Neeson as part of the Lincoln Center Festival, 2008.

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