Ararat
France, Canada
2002
115 Min
Color
1.66:1
Armenian, French, German, English
Director
Atom Egoyan
Atom Egoyan’s parents were painters and he studied International Relations and music at the University of Toronto where he began making short films: “Howard in Particular” 1979, “After Grad with Dad” 1980, “Peep Show” 1981 and “Open House” 1982.
While he has several distinguished Television and Opera works on his resume and such pictures as his debut “Next of Kin” 1984, Berlin and Moscow International Film Festival-winning “Family Viewing” 1987 and “The Adjuster” 1991 – his most critically acclaimed creation is The Sweet Hereafter (1997) and his most famous work is the astonishingly clever film-in-film Ararat (2002)
4 time Cannes Film Festival winner and the most famous Armenian filmmaker since Sergei Parajanov, the Egypt-born, Canada-bred, Oscar-nominated master of indie cinema, has collected an impressive 4 awards from the prestigious Toronto International Film Festival.
A 7 time recipient of Canada’s top Genie Awards, he is a remarkable figure in contemporary… read more
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Displaying 4 of 6 wall posts.
Hellshocked
27Jan12
By treating the Armenian genocide as irrelevant, history has made it impossible to forget it. All of the film's characters, whether they realize it or not, have been marked by an event that occured decades before they were born. An event that, even a century later, has lost none of its power. It is this white hot rage (even the film within a seems to emphasize a group of US missionaries caught in the middle more than the genocide itself) that fuels "Abarat", sustaining its uneven pacing and plethora of narrative threads. If it is messy, well, so is memory. Particularly when it has been passed down from generation to generation.
lolo341
6Oct11
Not his best but possibly Egoyan's most important? I agree w/ Roger Ebert who said "It is too much, too heavily layered, too needlessly difficult, too opaque [although] individual scenes leap out and have a life of their own." I believe the genocide occurred but rather than establish it as fact, the film almost makes the truth more slippery.
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