Interview: Oscar nominated Canadian director presents story on remembrance

"I feel very privileged to have a film called Remember, the understanding and preservation of history is extraordinary complex," Canadian director Atom Egoyan said.

Egoyan won the Grand Prize of the Jury at the Cannes Film Festival for for his masterpiece The Sweet Hereafter in 1997 and has been nominated for two Academy Awards, one for best director and other for best adapted screenplay, for the same film.

This year he presented a movie for the first time at the Venice Festival.

The story is about an old man who suffers dementia who chases the Nazi who killed his family. During his journey, he is confronted with his painful past.

"It's a human process of acknowledgments. First, we have to come to terms with ourselves and that's the focus of the film. It is about a character who, in the most unlikely way, is confronted with history," Egoyan said in an interview with Xinhua, while presenting his movie Remember in competition at the Venice Film Festival.

About how he managed his direction, Egoyan explained, "Unlike my previous films, that are incredibly complex, I wanted this to stay as simple as possible because I thought the character was so complex."

"I wanted my directing to seem almost invisible and almost observational; the challenge was to keep it as simple as possible knowing that there is this unusual road movie in it," he said.

The research on how Nazis were able to escape to the United States is very important for the movie, Egoyan said.

"There is a great book, that just came out, by Eric Lichtblau called The Nazis Next Door. It's shocking how Nazis were flowing to U.S., all the V rocket scientists were allowed free entry, and all people who were creating advanced technologies were given scandalous access and new identities."

Asked about the necessity of violence in the story, Egoyan said, "Because there is a suppressed violence and when it explodes inexpertly, we need that shot because we need to understand what the character is capable of."

Violence is a consequence of the high circulation of weapons in the U.S., according to Egoyan. There are shocking reminders in the film of how easy is to get a gun in the U.S. "I wanted to talk about the casualness of gun culture in the U.S.; you have to remind people of how different that is from a European or Canadian perspective," he explained.

Questioned about the challenge to make something new on the subject, Egoyan said, "I just felt that this was a completely original take, I think there are moments where you think you have been in that film but you haven't."

The humor is an important part of the movie, according to the Canadian director. There is something slightly surreal in this road movie, something somehow epic; the crossing of borders and the improbability of it. "I just felt so funny and odd about it," he said. Endit