CANNES -- The controversy simmering over Canadian filmmaker Atom Egoyan's Ararat heated up yesterday after the stunning and sophisticated film made its world premiere at the 55th Cannes Film Festival.

It is now obvious this made-in-Toronto drama -- which includes scenes of the shooting of a film-within-the-film, which deals directly with the historic slaughter of the Armenian population in one part of Turkey -- will become the lightning rod on the issue.

Although Egoyan remained civil, thoughtful and articulate yesterday, he struggled in vain at a press conference to maintain focus on the contemporary emotional issues in the film, and not on the lingering Armenian-Turkish struggle, which includes that horrifying history of genocide.

In 1915, according to eye-witness accounts Egoyan used as his source for that segment of his film, Turks murdered as many as one million Armenians. But the Turkish government still denies it was genocide or that the death toll was that high. The Turks maintain that Armenians who died did so during the general upheavals of World War I.

Egoyan said Ararat -- which is essentially the story of an Armenian-Canadian teenager who is inspired to research his own family history, his cultural heritage and the genocide when he works as a driver on the making of the film-within-the-film -- is far more personal than people realize.

"I think my goal from the beginning was (to make) a film that would tell a part of who I was at 18 years old. I needed to find a way of expressing the things that I had to deal with at that point in my life and (I had to find) a way of telling it that could make it urgent and available to other people. So this was the great challenge to me."

Egoyan, born in Cairo and raised in Canada, is of Armenian descent. His actress-wife Arsinee Khanjian, raised in Lebanon and then Canada, is also of Armenian descent. Yesterday, she defended Egoyan's film -- in which she plays the mother of the teen -- and deflected notions that Ararat is a film by an Armenian and only for Armenians.

"The fact that we are talking about this film as an Armenian film is a bit misrepresentative of the identity of the film," Khanjian told The Sun after the press conference, in which she said the same thing in fluent French. "It is not accidental at all that it was made in Canada. I don't think it could have been made anywhere else because it is the reality (of Canada because of immigration and multi-culturalism)."

She said most of the people on the film, from Egoyan to Hungarian-Canadian producer Robert Lantos, came to the project with cultural baggage - the same as all Canadians. "We have come together to talk about identity, diversity, history, memory and the responsibility our history gives us.

"I feel very strongly about this: This film could not have been made in any other society than the one we have because we are actively involved in these issues, whether we want to be or not. It is a country that has this incredible opportunity and privilege to be going through this."

But Egoyan, Khanjian and company were still bombarded yesterday with questions on the historical record, including from a Turkish critic who called himself "the criminal here" in a sarcastic reference to the portrayal of Turks in Ararat. A BBC foreign correspondent also tried to goad Egoyan into commenting on what she claimed were recent Armenian atrocities against the Turks -- but Egoyan refused, saying he was there to talk cinema, not politics.

Egoyan also once again defended his bold decision to keep Ararat out of competition here.

"I've been in competition a number of times. I've been on the jury. I know exactly the types of pressures and the gossip and rumours and the process one goes through and I did not want to expose this film to that."

http://www.canoe.ca/TorontoShowbiz/ts.ts-05-21-0071.html