In the 1980s, a loose-knit group of Canadian filmmakers began producing and directing independent films that gained national recognition around an aesthetic of kitchen-sink realism and grit, informed by foundationally Canadian forebearers like Donald Shebib (father to Drake’s producer OVO40), and David Cronenberg. In the time since, the most internationally recognized among this group informally deemed “The Toronto New Wave” has been Atom Egoyan, an Egyptian-born, Victoria-raised writer-director whose 1994 film Exotica won the FIPRESCI Prize at Cannes, marking the first time an anglophone Canadian film has done so. He soon followed with an adaptation of Russell Banks’s The Sweet Hereafter (1997), garnering him two Academy Award nominations and recognition as one of Canada’s most interesting filmmakers.
Egoyan’s work has typically orbited similar themes: the corruptibility of memory and its attendant hauntings and distortions; the mediation of relationships by communication technologies, and the mediation of history by film; the proliferation of violence by those who enact it, those who suffer from it, and those (as is often the case) who do both; and the charged eroticism that often suffuses both banal domestic settings and horrifically traumatic ones. In many of Egoyan’s films, the superabundance of provocative material risks veering into the realm of exploitation, if not for the delicate empathy with which he approaches his subject matter and its representation.
In many ways, Seven Veils marks a return to form for Egoyan, and a summative synthesis of the investigations that have preoccupied him throughout his career. The film follows Jeanine (Amanda Seyfried), a stage director hired to oversee the remount of her late-mentor Charles’s provocative adaptation of the opera Salome many years before. The audience quickly learns that Jeanine and Charles had an illicit relationship during the production, and that he used the abuse she had suffered at the hands of her father for inspiration in his interpretation of the opera. The remount, then, is a reconstruction of the past, or rather an interrogation of how the past can be reconstructed, and how it can be moved beyond.
Egoyan himself directed a provocative adaptation of Salome in 1996, which scandalized audiences upon its premiere by featuring a fairly explicit depiction of the titular character’s rape. He was asked to remount the production in 2023 with little alterations to his initial interpretation, but with the hindsight of nearly three decades of directing both film and further operatic work, he saw an opportunity to interrogate salient questions of inspiration, appropriation, and transformation through the film that has become Seven Veils, which was shot concurrent to his remount, and features the same operatic ensemble.
Ahead of the film’s North American release, Egoyan and I discussed the complexities of one of his most personal films.
Conor Truax: Seven Veils employs a number of interesting metafictional conceits. You’ve directed many operas, including an adaptation of one of your own films, Adoration (2008). Your first venture in directing opera was a provocative adaptation of Salome, which is the frame narrative of this film. The rehearsal scenes in the film coincided with the most recent iteration of Salome you directed in 2023, creating a truth effect that invites the audience into the creative act. When did you first have this idea, and how did you manage both creative processes in parallel?
Atom Egoyan: The original production of Salome was presented in 1996, between Exotica and The Sweet Hereafter. A lot of the themes I was dealing with in those two movies, I could approach violently through the music and the act itself. It was liberating and created a stage production that shocked people. For the dance of the seven veils, we turned it into a flashback with projections, ending in a shocking moment—not just nudity, but something else. People left the theater because it was upsetting and visceral, but the production was successful.
When the Canadian Opera Company decided to remount it two years ago, I knew we were not living in the same world as 1996. Social issues had shifted, but the production couldn’t change due to budget and time constraints. That frustration led me to write a story around the production with the notion of legacy. The character Jeanine, played by Amanda, was an intern who had an intense relationship with the deceased director. He stipulated in his will that she would remount the production. That idea excited me—bringing the intimacy of her childhood home and current home into this public opera house.
I wrote the screenplay knowing the production was coming and hoped financing would come together. Pre-production for the film overlapped with the opera rehearsals, which was a challenge. Amanda’s busy schedule after winning an Emmy for The Dropout added pressure. But we pulled it off thanks to my producing partners and the team I’ve worked with in both opera and film.
CT: You mentioned the childhood home and the opera house as primary settings. Jeanine often interacts with the house through video calls, reflecting your recurring exploration of how relationships are mediated by communication technologies. How did you think about framing screens and the opera scenes themselves?
AE: The opera set is influenced by German expressionism—heightened reality that had to transition into the film. When using video calls, the screens reflect the character. There’s a reflection of Amanda’s character on the screen that she can’t see, but the audience can. We enhanced that digitally to give her continuity between spaces and tie her into watching archival tapes from her past. Technology allows relationships to be reignited or trivialized, and characters choreograph their own representations.
I’m not a technophobe. I’ve dealt with technology since the Eighties. There’s a materiality to these technologies that informs how relationships are conducted. The father in the film teaches Jeanine to observe and make choices, turning her into a director herself.
CT: The home videos show Jeanine’s childhood, but some shots seem to be from her perspective, suggesting she’s behind the camera. Was that intentional?
AE: You’re the first person to bring that up—it’s important. She’s creatively embedded in those choices, guided by her father’s training. Even as a dancer, she’s making directorial decisions. Thank you for noticing that.
CT: There’s been writing about the end of forgetting, with technology serving as a totem. But there’s still emotional subjectivity in these recordings. Your earlier films explored generational loss with videotape. How do you think about that now?
AE: Those metaphors feel obsolete now. In Family Viewing (1987), generational loss was conveyed by taping over video. That’s not relevant anymore, but the texture and aspect ratio of MiniDV in Seven Veils still convey a sense of time. These technologies become markers that might need to be explained in the future. Different video technologies have their own textures. Hi8 video, MiniDV, and digital formats each carry a different emotional resonance. There’s something about the physicality of older technologies that conveys a sense of memory and impermanence.
CT: The film highlights the fallibility of technology, not just its period-specific qualities but its inherent corruption—how color registers or the perspective shifts.
AE: Absolutely. Theatrical productions are meant to be remounted as closely as possible, but performers and interpretations shift. The archival footage in the film was shot surreptitiously by me on Hi8 video, not the fixed camera typical in Union houses. That illicit quality heightens the erotic energy embedded in the footage.
CT: Another key theme is the mediation of trauma. The film interrogates how trauma is instrumentalized, both by ourselves and by others. How did you approach that, especially reflecting on your own work?
AE: That experience has haunted me. Foundational to my upbringing was a relationship with a woman involved in an incestuous relationship with her father. That experience emerged in Exotica and The Sweet Hereafter. The woman became a great director herself, and has since passed away. She was upset by my production of Salome. This film imagines what it would be like if she could come back and take that narrative back.
When she saw Exotica, she recognized the school uniforms from her own past. That was very personal, and I’ve thought a lot about how I’ve taken that experience and instrumentalized it in my own work.
You have to also look at how it’s inspired by Oscar Wilde’s text. I think it’s a personal piece of work because he’s talking about his own love of the male body when he’s describing John the Baptist. He’s talking about his own erotic reverie in a culture that doesn’t allow him to express that. In the Bible, it’s Herodias, Salome’s mother, who commands that John the Baptist be killed. Wilde’s interpretation makes it Salome’s decision, saying, “This has nothing to do with my mother.” That shift, along with the idea of looking too much and fetishizing what is regarded, is foundational to the film.
That’s a loaded question because I question that all the time. I didn’t expect to start this conversation, but you’ve opened it, and now we get to end it. You’ve really gotten to the core of what this movie is about.
CT: Thank you so much for your time and candor.
AE: Thank you.
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