TORONTO - Acclaimed Canadian filmmaker Atom Egoyan says watching his 14-year-old son grow up in the age of the Internet was a big impetus for his latest feature "Adoration," about a student who tells a lie that spins out of control online.
"I think a lot of the film was born out of this idea of our son reaching a point -- and then reflecting back on who I was at that age," Egoyan said in an interview at the Toronto International Film Festival, where the thought-provoking drama is screening.
"Certainly at that age, that's when I got really involved in high school drama and I began to be consumed by making up these narratives ... If I was that kid now? With the Internet, it would be irresistible to kind of not use that medium."
"Adoration," written, directed and produced by Egoyan, stars Devon Bostick as a Toronto teen named Simon who is encouraged by his French teacher (Arsinee Khanjian, Egoyan's wife) to read a terrorism news story to his class and pretend that he is a key part of it.
The story Simon tells in the film is inspired by a real-life 1986 headline about a Jordanian man who put a bomb in the luggage of his pregnant Irish girlfriend before she attempted to board an El Al flight.
In the film, Simon pretends that he was the unborn child.
"That story, when it first came out ... it was the first time I realized that a terrorist could abstract another human being to that extent, especially a loved one who's carrying his own child," said Egoyan, who is of Armenian descent and was born in Cairo but raised in Victoria, B.C., and Toronto.
Students who hear of Simon's alleged past, not knowing it isn't real, go home to tell their parents and soon the entire community is engaged in heated discussions in online webcam chat rooms about the tale.
The ensuing firestorm of deceit forces Simon to reconcile his feelings about the death of his parents, played in flashbacks by Rachel Blanchard and Noam Jenkins.
Interwoven throughout the film are the struggles of Simon's uncle, deftly played by Scott Speedman, as well as issues of racism, cultural ignorance, intolerance, humanizing terrorist figures and how technology affects the way we communicate.
"I used to think 20 years ago when I made these films dealing with satellite communications that we would lose our sense of humanity and that we would kind of distance ourselves from each other, but in fact that's not really true," said Toronto-based Egoyan, who touched on some of the same themes two decades ago with the film "Speaking Parts."
"In fact, it's saturated us with a degree of intimacy we could have never imagined."
Arshile, Egoyan's son, is a bit younger than Simon, who is part of a generation where texting, digital cameras and cellphones are near necessities, said the director.
To learn how teens are using Internet communication, Egoyan held workshops with Toronto high school students and said "it was shocking how immediate and easy it was for them to create these personas" online.
"It's not so schizophrenic to have these different personalities for them," said Egoyan, who earned Oscar nominations for directing and writing the screenplay for 1997's "The Sweet Hereafter."
"Adoration" earned Egoyan the Ecumenical Jury Prize, which honours directing, at the Cannes Film Festival in May, an honour that brought tears to his eyes.
"I was pretty emotional," said Egoyan.
"It's difficult for people to understand how overwhelming that event is. I've been there so many times but each time it's just, it's so overwhelming, it's like there's so much work to do and you're exposing your film to the entire world ... So when you get a prize like that, especially when it's worded so beautifully and it completely understands your film ... I just felt really stirred by that."
"Adoration" is to be released in theatres in February.
