EGOYAN MAKES CANNES CUT FOR THE SIXTH TIME

Globe and Mail, Canada
April 24 2008

The Canadian director’s new movie, Adoration, will compete next month
for the Palme d’Or along side films by Clint Eastwood and Steven
Soderbergh. ‘It’s always a little overwhelming when you look at the
competition,’ he tells Gayle MacDonald GAYLE MACDONALD

Atom Egoyan’s new film, Adoration, was named yesterday one of the 19
finalists that will be in competition next month for the prestigious
Palme d’Or Award at the 61st annual Festival de Cannes.

The film’s inclusion in Official Selection marks the sixth time that
a feature film from the Victoria-raised, Toronto-based director’s
work has made the cut.

Reached yesterday, Egoyan said it was "an honour" to be included,
adding "this is not something I take for granted.

"Especially with this movie. It’s a more intimate film. It’s very much
rooted in this culture and I’m so proud to represent the country at
this level."

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The previous Egoyan titles in the running for the Palme d’Or include
Exotica (1994), The Sweet Hereafter (1997), Felicia’s Journey (1999)
and Where the Truth Lies (2005). Ararat, his 2002 film about the
Armenian genocide, was an Official Selection in Cannes as well.

The 19-strong competition lineup includes projects from veteran
directors including Clint Eastwood’s Changeling, Jean-Pierre and Luc
Dardenne’s Le Silence de Lorna, Walter Salles and Daniela Thomas’s
Linha de Passe, Wim Wenders’s The Palermo Shooting, and Steven
Soderbergh’s four-hour biopic, Che, about Sixties revolutionary
Ernesto Che Guevara.

"It’s always a little overwhelming when you look at the competition,"
Egoyan noted of his fellow filmmakers. "Having been on the jury
there as well, however, it begins to make more sense once you’re
in the middle of it. From the outside, it seems a little crazy to
just throw all these movies together, but they are selected quite
carefully. There’s an internal logic that you don’t really get until
you’re actually there."

The Cannes’ committee only screened Adoration this past weekend. Egoyan
and his colleagues found out they would be vying for the Palme d’Or
a few days ago.

Yesterday, Adoration’s co-producers Simone Urdl and Jennifer Weiss
said they were "thrilled" to get the news. "We certainly hoped it
would happen," said the co-founders of Toronto’s Film Farm, "and
Cannes was the place we wanted the film to go. But because we were
so late submitting it – and because there seems to be a lot of great
films out there right now – we still weren’t sure."

Urdl, who started as Egoyan’s production assistant in 1991, added "I
don’t think you can ever take these things for granted. People assume
– because it’s Atom and he has such a long history [with Cannes] –
that he’ll get in. But that’s not the case.

"Adoration is quite different than his last couple of films. And the
head of the Cannes festival had changed. So we truly weren’t sure,
and to get in, was really exciting news."

Weiss says Adoration – a film shot in Toronto last fall for about
$5.5-million – was a nice change of pace for Egoyan. "For him,
going back to this budget and scale was liberating. There’s simply
not the same pressure to make a big, splashy film with big stars. So
we have an ensemble cast, and the discovery of a new actor (Devon
Bostick) who is only now 16 and plays the lead. All those elements,
meant Atom got to have fun. It’s an extremely personal film for him,
without external pressure."

Adoration focuses on one young man’s fascination with the possibility
he’s the spawn of two historical figures – and how his personal
obsession is both enabled, and threatened, by technology.

The film also stars Scott Speedman, Rachel Blanchard, Kenneth Welsh,
and Arsinee Khanjian (Egoyan’s wife).

The director says his screenplay grew out of a true-life story he’d
heard 20 years ago about a young man who convinced his pregnant Irish
girlfriend to board a flight, carrying a bomb that she didn’t know
had been planted on her. "This story – or a version of it – is read
in the main character’s high school and it triggers his imagination,"
Egoyan explains.

The film is executive produced by Robert Lantos’s Serendipity Point
Films, and will be distributed by his company Maximum Film.

"This is the seventh time I’ve gone to Cannes in competition," Lantos
said yesterday. ". … Maybe this time, we’ll be seven times lucky
and get the Palme d’Or."

*****

The competition

The 19 films competing for the 2008 Palme d’or

(a 20th film, from France, is still to be announced):

Uc Maymun (Three Monkeys)

by Nuri Bilge Ceylan (Turkey)

Le Silence de Lorna (The Silence of Lorna)

by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne (Belgium)

Un Conte de Noël (A Christmas Tale)

by Arnaud Desplechin (France)

Changeling

by Clint Eastwood (U.S.)

Adoration

by Atom Egoyan (Canada)

Waltz with Bashir

by Ari Folman (Israel)

La Frontière de l’aube (The Frontier of Dawn)

by Philippe Garrel (France)

Gomorra

by Matteo Garrone (Italy)

24 City

by Jia Zhangke (China)

Synecdoche, New York

by Charlie Kaufman (U.S.)

My Magic

by Eric Khoo (Singapore)

La Mujer Sin Cabeza (Woman Without a Head)

by Lucretia Martel (Argentina)

Serbis

by Brillante Mendoza (Philippines)

Delta

by Kornel Mundruczo (Hungary)

Linha de Passe (Line of Passage)

by Walter Salles, Daniela Thomas (Brazil)

Che

by Steven Soderbergh (U.S.)

Il Divo

by Paolo Sorrentino (Italy)

Leonera

by Pablo Trapero (Argentina)

The Palermo Shooting

by Wim Wenders (Germany)

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