Visionary Canadian filmmaker Atom Egoyan‘s latest work casts Amanda Seyfriend as earnest theatre director Jeanine, who has been given the task of remounting her former mentor’s most famous work, the opera “Salome.” Haunted by dark and disturbing memories from her past, Jeanine allows her repressed trauma to color the present as she re-enters the opera world after so many years away.

With SEVEN VEILS, the director is diving into his own “art imitating life” pool, as he famously directed the opera, ‘Salome,’ in 1996 (the first opera in what would be many to come over his career). Best known as a prominent film director since the 1980s, Egoyan has proven he is a master of both mediums. “I’ve been involved with opera for a number of years, doing it parallel to my film work. I always wondered if there was a way to bring the two worlds together,” he says.

More recently, the director was interested in exploring what the production of ‘Salome’ would mean in our current culture. This interest led him to write the script for SEVEN VEILS, about a remount of Salome that he filmed at the same time the opera was on stage, using the opera singers from Salome in the film.  “Salome is a production I’ve done a number of times so when I knew that the Canadian Opera Company was remounting it, I thought this would be an ideal time to fuse the opera singers I knew they had booked with the script I had written,” says Egoyan. “I wanted to try and fuse the themes of the opera with the themes of the screenplay which was dealing with the world around the making of this opera. It’s not really an opera movie, it’s just using the world of the opera as a workplace like any workplace. We see the characters as they float in and out of scenes dealing with the preparation of the opera.”

“Egoyan has always delved right into fraught familial ties without shying away from ugliness, and “Seven Veils” is perhaps his most overt exploration of familial trauma. “ (RogerEbert.com)

“Resituating classic operas in updated contexts is, by now, old hat… But with “Seven Veils” Mr. Egoyan has done something more interesting, weaving a new narrative into and around the opera until the two become a dense, dark thicket of their own.” (Wall Street Journal)

“Amanda Seyfried gives a dynamic, complex performance as an opera director grappling with trauma in her past and present.” (Observer)

“A fascinating film about appropriation – not cultural but personal, the morally dubious territory in which the artist takes your trauma and spins it into gold.” (Globe and Mail)

Sunday, April 19
Doors 12:45 pm | Movie 1:15 pm *Start time subject to change. Please arrive on time.
Tickets HERE

SEVEN VEILS (Atom Egoyan, 2025 / 107 mins / 14A) After years away, theater director Jeanine  re-enters the opera world to stage her former mentor’s most famous work. Haunted by dark and disturbing memories from her past, Jeanine allows her repressed trauma to color the present as her personal and professional lives begin to unravel.

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