TORONTO - Atom Egoyan is the picture of contentment as he shuffles across a black-and-white checkerboard floor in his funky studio on the fringes of Toronto's theatre district. If only for a few hours, he's floating between two worlds -- the chaotic, all-consuming post-production process for his new film Ararat that he recently completed and the insanity of the Cannes Film Festival that unspools this week.

Judging by his mood during a walk-and-talk through his homey, cluttered production centre, discreetly situated among a row of heritage buildings on a quiet street near King and Bathhurst streets, the Victoria-raised filmmaker is clearly savouring this down time.

Between cracking jokes and humbly showing off memorabilia like a gigantic poster for Exotica (1994), celebrity scribblings and a framed newspaper article in which Ingmar Bergman sings Egoyan's praises, there's a nagging problem he's finding hard to shake, however.

The iconic auteur can't help but express his frustration over the escalating controversy generated by the complex, multi-layered film that will be seen by audiences, critics and international film buyers for the first time on the Croisette in Cannes on May 20.

Ararat, which Egoyan co-produced with Canadian movie mogul Robert Lantos, centres on the experiences of an Armenian director at work on a film about the infamous 1915 Armenian genocide. The film cuts between the past and present-day production of the film-within-a-film.

Egoyan, who was born in Cairo and is of Armenian descent, directed from his own screenplay. His film, which has been picked up by Miramax for North American distribution, stars two actors of Armenian heritage -- French singer Charles Aznavour as the director of the film-within and Eric Bogosian as its screenwriter-- as well as Christopher Plummer, Bruce Greenwood and Marie-Josee Croze.

Before the release print was even dry, Ararat came under attack. The Turkish government has threatened legal action if the film implicates it in the First World War slaughter of 1.5 million Armenians that it has yet to acknowledge. Turkish groups have also threatened boycotts.

Because of the uproar, Cannes officials granted Egoyan's request to remove the film from competition and give it a special screening.

"The nature of the history that the film represents has never really been shown before," says Egoyan, 41, looking stylish and relaxed in a royal blue silk shirt, dark jacket and matching dress pants. "The amount of political pressure being put on the film is, I think, quite abnormal and unexpected, so to then place it under the pressure cooker of competition wouldn't feel right. It just accelerates all sorts of pressures."

The former Mount Doug and Glenlyon student is no stranger to Cannes, of course. That's where his Oscar-nominated The Sweet Hereafter (1997), Exotica and Felicia's Journey (1999) made their premieres in competition and Speaking Parts (1989) and The Adjuster (1991) were part of the festival's Director's Fortnight.

Sharing wall space with photos of his wife, actress Arsinee Khanjian, posing with Mel Gibson; their eight-year-old son Arshile cavorting on the Riviera; the premiere of The Adjuster at the Piazzo Grande in Locarno; and a heart-melting shot of Atom and Arshile, is yet another reminder of Egoyan's past on the Croisette.

It's a framed video jacket for The Conversation (1974) with a note scrawled by Francis Ford Coppolla, on whose Cannes jury Egoyan sat six years ago.

Given the theme of Ararat, which Egoyan shot in Toronto and Drumheller, Alta., last year, the irony of having it even considered for official competition wasn't lost on him.

"It just seems so weird that a movie no one had even seen was already being judged," noted Egoyan, seated in a lime-green Fabulous Fifties chair in a bright, cluttered workspace adjacent to a room that houses a vintage Steenbeck editing console.

"This film is so much about the nature of judgment," continues Egoyan thoughtfully. "It would be ironic to put it into that situation. It wouldn't feel right. "

With a $17-million budget, Egoyan's sweeping labour of love is the most expensive film he's ever made. It features hundreds of extras wearing black shawls, fezzes, brocade vests and other period garb on locations replicating Turkish Armenia, like the war-torn city of Van that was meticulously recreated by production designer Phillip Barker in Toronto's Cherry Beach. Hence, false expectations may have been raised.

Shooting in Alberta's Drumheller Valley, which stood in for Armenia because it has similar topography to Anatolia, also may have created the impression a Hollywood period piece was shooting as Armenian extras portrayed their ancestors being marched to their deaths.

But Ararat is not a historical epic per se, emphasizes Egoyan. The film-within-a-film certainly is, but that's just part of a richer emotional canvas.

It's no coincidence, says the articulate filmmaker, that distinguishing between reality and artifice in the film is its most compelling aspect.

"That's why I wish all this stuff would die down because when people see it, it's not what they will expect," he laments. "Certainly the scale of it is bigger than anything I've ever done. But it's actually a very contemporary story and because of the way the characters move and the way the film feels it will be recognizeable from the other work I've done."

While Ararat uses the Armenian genocide as the triggering event, Egoyan says the film deals mostly with the "transition of trauma" that can arise from any disturbing situation, whether it's the effects on those close to survivors of the Holocaust, Sept. 11 or other jolting events.

"I find that fascinating," he explains passionately. "A lot of the ideas in my film refer to the event obliquely and have referred to the residual effects of it in an oblique way that is actually quite direct. It gets passed from one generation to the next."

Egoyan has gained a reputation as a director many big name screen veterans want to work with. In Felicia's Journey, for example, Bob Hoskins played a deceptively charming serial killer; and John Hurt collaborated with Egoyan on his film interpretation of Krapp's Last Tape.

This time out, he got to work with two stars who ranked high on his wish list -- Aznavour and Plummer.

Neither was particularly difficult to work with, he says.

"The most cumbersome and difficult thing was just getting them attached to the project," he noted.

Egoyan then confesses he was mildly intimidated working with Plummer at first.

"He's very, very particular about what it is he needs, but it's really gratifying," he recalled. "You can't just say to Chris, 'Let's do another take.' He has to ask why. He'll say, 'What was wrong with the last one?' And that is unusual. He needs to know exactly what you're expecting."

And did anyone have the courage to ask Plummer to reminisce about The Sound of Music, the movie he loathes and declines to discuss?

Egoyan laughs. His wife, he says, is obsessed with The Sound of Music. It's her favourite film and she collects related memorabilia.

"She had to ask him about," he recalled, smiling. "But he was very gracious."

In the weeks and months to come, Egoyan will undoubtedly find himself defending Ararat. It distresses him.

As proud as he is of the film, he says he has come to realize focusing too closely on a particular project is "to miss the point of your career and how it works."

Indeed, Egoyan has busied himself with a staggering array of projects over the years besides his films. There was his radical interpretation of Salome for the Canadian Opera Company that triggered a nasty but entertaining war of words with National Post music critic Tamara Bernstein over a scathing review that he felt suggested he was anti-Semitic; a thoughtful essay on analogue technology he wrote for The Guardian; and his acclaimed art installation Steenbecket in London, one of many he has mounted in centres around the world.

"People don't understand why during the mixing for a huge film I would want to carve out time to go to London to do an art piece, but for me they really do feed off each other," says Egoyan, explaining his passion for analogue technology as an art form.

Egoyan's fascination with technology and its alienating effects has been a common thread in his films. He provocatively explored the more vulnerable aspects of outdated technology in Krapp's Last Tape, where the title character of Samuel Beckett's play portrayed by John Hurt listens to scratchy recordings of his younger self reminiscing about himself years earlier still. The theme surfaces again explicitly in Ararat.

"Those issues that have been in all of my works I've now been able to explore in other areas. It's very gratifying."

When Egoyan starts pontificating on such issues, it's mesmerizing, but you can also see why some observers scratch their heads. What many don't often see is Egoyan's boyish enthusiasm and sense of humour off-camera. It's abundant this afternoon.

He can't help but laugh, for example, as he pulls out a video box promoting Exotica, his mournful, artfully meditative film that gradually unveils why a character played by Bruce Greenwood frequents a strip club and becomes obsessed with Mia Kirshner's girlish exotic dancer.

It's being mass-marketed as if it were one of those steamy erotic straight-to-video thrillers, not as an Atom Egoyan film.

"You really have to look for my name on this," he says bemusedly as he flips the box over and finally finds it in tiny print.

"It says nothing about the fact this is an art film," he continues, howling with laughter and shaking his head as he reads the adline: "The first in a hot new string of high-profile striptease movies."

Before driving through Toronto traffic at rush hour in his Range Rover to pick up his son from school, as he does most days, Egoyan also demonstrates a sense of humour about the Ararat controversy.

It could have been worse, he says. What if people think it's called Arafat, and that it's a film about the PLO leader?

Egoyan has even agreed to appear in a comic sketch about that in Ken Finkleman's movie version of his TV series The Newsroom.

"There's a character in it who plays Atom Egoyan and he's just finished making Ararat, which everyone confuses for Arafat. My character goes around saying, 'No, it's 'rat," not 'fat.'"

It can't be any worse than the time Egoyan good-naturedly agreed to make a cameo appearance in the Tom Arnold movie The Stupids. He breaks into laughter as he repeats a story he loves to tell about how one of Arshile's friends reacted when he met Egoyan, obviously unaware of the impressive body of work and international renown his pal's dad had amassed.

" 'Hey, aren't you that guy who was in The Stupids?'" mimics Egoyan, laughing before switching into Cannes mode.