Atom Egoyan

Born in Egypt, Atom Egoyan was two years old when he moved with his Armenian parents to British Columbia. An honors student at the University of Toronto, Egoyan knew exactly what he wanted to do with his life upon graduation: in 1982, he formed his own motion picture production company, Ego Film Arts. Two years later, he wrote and directed his first feature, Next of Kin (1984). One critic has described Egoyan's films as Chinese puzzles: difficult to penetrate, unpredictable when penetrated. A prime example is The Adjuster (1991), in which two apparently prim, above-suspicion types--an insurance adjuster and his movie-censor wife--play voyeur when they think no one is looking. Atom Egoyan has won multiple industry awards for his subsequent films Calendar (1994) and Exotica (1994)