Adoration

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In the framework of the Filmfest Hamburg the Canadian director Atom Egoyan was awarded the Douglas Sirk prize. Wim Wenders held the laudatio.

He told the audience the story of how he met Atom Egoyan for the first time twenty years ago at the Montréal Film Festival. It was a festival for young directors and Wenders won the Jury prize with a cheque for $5000 dollars. He felt quite guilty about receiving the prize because he was already over forty and was presenting his 15th film. As he was being handed the cheque his mind was racing and then he saw the runner up – the 27-year-old Atom Egoyan who was presenting his second film, “Family Viewing”. Wenders handed the cheque to the young man and dedicated the prize to him.

One year later Atom Egoyan won the prize at the same festival, this time it was a cheque for $10,000, at a time when he urgently needed the money. But when he saw Wim Wenders in the audience he acted quickly and handed the cheque to the runner up of that year. What a beautiful gesture!

After the long and very nervously delivered speech by Wim Wenders, Atom Egoyan came up to the stage. He was witty and confident and the first thing he said was, “Thank you, Wim, but what I never told you was this: When I got back home after receiving the cheque from you, I went to the bank to cash it. The person at the bank asked me ‘Are you Wim Wenders?’. When I said that I wasn’t but Wim had given me the cheque, he said that I couldn’t get the money. So the cheque was utterly useless.”

The film that was shown was the German premiere of Adoration.

Adoration is a very moving film about a teenager, Simon, who, inspired by his teacher as part of a drama project, makes up a story about his parents and tells it to his classmates as if it was real. The whole class starts discussing the events related by their friend on-line in a chat room. Even the parents have a chat room of their own where they are discussing the same issues. The protagonist refuses to tell his classmates that it was in fact a fake story.

There are several other strings – the real story about Simon’s parents, his life as it is at the moment, living with his uncle and the story of his teacher.

I liked that it was such a contemporary story, people are communicating via web-cam and Simon records his grandfather on his mobile phone. Although I have to say, being in a modern world, people could have googled Simon’s father and would have found out that it was a fake story.

Adoration is a great film and I will try to watch some other films by Atom Egoyan in the future.

(foto: Filmfest Hamburg)