Atom Egoyan is a Cairo-born Canadian filmmaker of Armenian descent who broke through in the early '90s with a string of sharp and experimental dramas, including Exotica and his magnum opus, The Sweet Hereafter. He began directing features in the early 1980s as part of the loose movement known as the Toronto New Wave. Some of his strongest early works include the familial dramas Next of Kin and Family Viewing. Egoyan's 21st-century output ranges from the polarizing erotic thriller Chloe to the Holocaust revenge drama Remember. His latest project is the upcoming Seven Veils, a drama starring Amanda Seyfried.
A writer as well as a director, Egoyan is the quintessential provocative auteur; his work stands out because of their intricate narratives and a keen sense of visual composition. Thematically, he's unafraid to explore challenging territory, including tragedy, abuse, deception and violence. Fans on IMDb have shown great respect to Egoyan's filmography, with most of his movies receiving good-to-great ratings on the popular site.
10 'Where the Truth Lies' (2005)
IMDb: 6.4/10
"Once upon a time, when terrible things happened to people, they were left as a mystery." Where the Truth Lies is a twisty thriller that harks back to classic film noir. The story begins in 1957 with the dead body of a female college student in the hotel room of popular comedians Lanny Morris (Kevin Bacon) and Vince Collins (Colin Firth). The movie then flashes forward fifteen years, introducing Alison Lohman as journalist Karen O'Connor, who is hired to ghostwrite Collins's autobiography. However, secretly, she is infatuated with Morris and has also made a promise that she will uncover the truth behind the young woman's death years before.
From there, the narrative becomes truly labyrinthine—some must say incomprehensible and occasionally frustrating. However, there's no denying the talent of the lead performers, particularly the always riveting Kevin Bacon, who is entertainingly sleazy and slimy. Where the Truth Lies falls somewhat short of its promise, but ultimately, it's still more interesting than most thrillers of its kind.
9 'The Adjuster' (1991)
IMDb: 6.6/10
"You may not know it yet, but you're in shock." Noah Render (Elias Koteas) works as an insurance adjuster specializing in handling claims related to fire damage. However, his role goes beyond the professional. He becomes intimately involved in the lives of his clients, even sleeping with them, blurring the boundaries between empathy and manipulation and hiding from his film censor wife Hera (Arsinée Khanjian). However, Hera has issues of her own, like smuggling pornographic clips home and sharing them with her sister. Eventually, the weight of these secrets leads to an incendiary climax.
The Adjuster was Egoyan's first movie to receive significant international attention, and it's easy to see why. While not his most entertaining work, it makes for an astute and thought-provoking study of domestic disharmony. The characters are trapped in their own webs of lies, which build and build until they can't help but reach a breaking point. Its strongest feature is the plot, which is poetic and tightly constructed.
8 'Calendar' (1993)
IMDb: 6.7/10
Calendar revolves around a Canadian photographer, played by Egoyan himself, who travels to Armenia with his wife (Arsinée Khanjian), a translator. The couple, grappling with personal and cultural differences, embarks on a journey that becomes a meditation on memory, identity, and the nature of relationships. Along the way, the photographer starts to realize that his wife is falling in love with Ashot (Ashot Adamyan), their guide and driver, and their relationship grows ever more strained.
The film is structured around the husband's use of a calendar to document their experiences, both as a device to capture the passage of time and as a symbol of their fading connection. Calendar is narratively inventive, with the section in Armenia unfolding from the photographer's perspective, followed by a segment in the photographer's Toronto dining room where he goes on several dates with escorts. A further section centers on the photographer's answering machine, containing messages from his wife revealing the breakdown of their marriage.
7 'Family Viewing' (1987)
IMDb: 6.7/10
The young Van (Aidan Tierney) lives under the thumb of his domineering father (David Hemblen), who is obsessed with shooting home videotapes. Although Van's father has room for Van's grandmother (Selma Keklikian) in their home, he instead leaves her to waste away in a nursing home with only her TV for company. After meeting a phone sex worker (Arsinée Khanjian) whose grandmother stays in the next bed, Van hatches a scheme to get his gran out of the nursing home - and perhaps create a new family for himself.
Family Viewing is very much a commentary on technology and how it can alienate people from one another. Film and video are at the heart of this critique, from the TV that Van's grandmother endlessly watches to Van's father's old home videos, from which he erases all shots of Van's mother as he attempts to replace her with his new lover Sandra (Gabrielle Rose). Thought-provoking and melancholic yet strangely hopeful, Family Viewing is a gentle gem in Egoyan's filmography.
6 'Speaking Parts' (1989)
IMDb: 6.7/10
This drama weaves together the lives of several damaged, isolated individuals. One of them is Lance (Michael McManus), a hotel switchboard operator and aspiring actor who moonlights as a gigolo. His co-worker Lisa (Arsinée Khanjian) is infatuated with him and even stalks him, though he ignores her. Her obsession reaches the point that she rents and pores over every video Lance has ever appeared in. At the same time, Lance is offered a role in a movie based on the life of screenwriter Clara (Gabrielle Rose) and begins an affair with her, though Clara is frustrated by the way the producers alter her life story for the film.
Similar to Family Viewing, Speaking Parts delves into the effects video has on human connection. It raises questions about the authenticity of images and how they can keep people apart rather than bring them closer together. In this regard, the movie was arguably ahead of its time, prefiguring by several decades the current world of social media, filters, Zoom meetings, and deepfakes.
5 'Next of Kin' (1984)
IMDb: 6.9/10
Next of Kin centers on Peter (Patrick Tierney), a twenty-three-year-old man who lives at home with his bickering parents. After he comes across a video of an Armenian family, the Deryans, who gave up their son for adoption when they arrived in Canada a decade earlier, Peter sets out to find them. He pretends to be their son and is welcomed into their home. There, he begins trying to mend the relationship between the father, George Deryan (Berge Fazlian), and his daughter Azah (Arsinée Khanjian).
This was Egoyan's debut feature, and he hit the ground running, showing off his knack for great camera work and sweeping shots. Narratively, Next of Kin is also rich and intriguing, poking at questions of identity, family, and deception. Not all the performances are good, but Khanjian is fantastic in a complex role. Khanjian and Egoyan met on the set and became a couple soon after, going on to collaborate on many projects over the coming decades.
4 'Felicia's Journey' (1999)
IMDb: 7.0/10
This dark psychological thriller follows Felicia (Elaine Cassidy), a pregnant Irish teenager who travels to England in search of her boyfriend, Johnny (Peter McDonald). She believes that he is working at a factory, but in reality, he has left her and joined the British army. Along the way, Felicia meets a mysterious and seemingly helpful man named Joseph Hilditch (Bob Hoskins), who pretends to help her find Johnny but has hidden motives of his own.
Felicia's Journey is a brutal film, but one with a fascinating and unexpected conclusion involving a small act of kindness and the possibility of some kind of redemption. It works largely thanks to the late and mighty Bob Hoskins; Hilditch is a complex, challenging character to play, but he more than rises to the occasion. Hoskins turns what could have been a stock villain into a believable, three-dimensional figure.
3 'Exotica' (1994)
IMDb: 7.0/10
Tax auditor Francis (Bruce Greenwood) is a broken man. Sometime before the film's beginning, his daughter was kidnapped and murdered. After that, his wife died in a car accident that also left his brother Harold (Victor Garber) with paraplegia. He also learns that his wife and Harold were having an affair, straining his relationship with his brother. Now, Francis spends much of his time at the strip club Exotica, where he always has the dancer Christina (Mira Kirshner) perform privately for him.
From here, the film introduces more characters whose lives intersect with Francis's, including the strip club DJ Eric (Elias Koteas), who once dated Christina and is jealous of Francis. After Eric has Francis banned from the club, Francis begins plotting a convoluted scheme to take revenge. Exotica is a dark erotic thriller that is either bold and incisive or in poor taste, depending on your point of view. Greenwood and Krishner deliver career-best performances in two deeply challenging roles. Exotica was a commercial and critical success and substantially boosted Egoyan's profile. However, it has since become one of the most underrated thrillers of the 90s.
2 'Remember' (2015)
IMDb: 7.5/10
Christopher Plummer stars as Zev Guttman, an elderly Holocaust survivor living in a nursing home. He is haunted by the memory of his family's murder during World War II and embarks on a mission to seek justice. Despite grappling with dementia, Zev is determined to track down the Nazi guard responsible for the atrocities. Assisted by a fellow resident (Martin Landau), Zev follows a carefully crafted set of instructions, encountering unexpected twists and moral dilemmas along the way.
Remember is a solemn drama merged with an exploitation flick, unlike any other Nazi revenge movie. It's lean, mean, and well-paced, exploring many ideas in its brisk 94-minute runtime. Although it may not quite reach the heights it aspires to, Remember makes for a solid drama with plenty to say about the weight of the past and the ethics of vengeance. It deserves praise for resisting easy answers and the typically stellar work from Plummer.
1 'The Sweet Hereafter' (1997)
IMDb: 7.5/10
Egoyan's most acclaimed movie explores the aftermath of a school bus accident in a small Canadian town. The vehicle slid on a patch of ice and plunged into a lake, killing fourteen children on board and wounding others. Soon after, lawyer Mitchell Stephens (Ian Holm) arrives in the community to convince grieving parents to file a class-action lawsuit against those deemed responsible for the accident. Stephens becomes tangled up in the lives of the townspeople, including Billy (Bruce Greenwood), a grieving father who distrusts Stephens, and Nicole (Sarah Polley), a fifteen-year-old aspiring musician left paralyzed by the accident.
The Sweet Hereafter is Egoyan at his most fearless and sensitive, examining themes of loss, guilt, and the search for meaning in the face of tragedy. Fundamentally, it's an exploration of the impact of trauma on a community. The urgent subject matter is matched by confident storytelling, non-linear narrative techniques, and nuanced character development. The Sweet Hereafter received rave reviews and has since been ranked by some publications as one of the best Canadian films ever made.
