Canadian-Armenian filmmaker Atom Egoyan was born in Egypt and raised in Vancouver, Canada.
As a teenager, he became interested in reading and writing plays and went on to study at the University of Toronto where he started learning about his Armenian heritage by taking Armenian history courses.
A four-time winner each at the Cannes Film Festival and the Toronto International Film Festival, Egoyan has directed a dozen full-length films. He earned Academy Award nominations for Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay for his film The Sweet Hereafter (1997).