EXCLUSIVE: The Atom Egoyan-directed drama Seven Veils starring Oscar nominee Amanda Seyfried will be hitting theaters in the U.S. on March 7 via XYZ Films and Variance.
Seyfried plays theater director Jeanine, who re-enters the opera world after several years away 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. The movie was shot on location during the staging of Egoyan’s acclaimed production of Salome.
“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,” says the two-time Oscar-nominated filmmaker.
More recently, the director was interested in exploring what Salome would mean in our current culture, which led him to pen Seven Veils, about a remount of Salome that he filmed at the same time the opera was on stage, using the opera singers 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 explore how the themes of Salome could weave with the story of remounting this particular production. 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.”
“The story of Salome has such a rich inheritance. It comes to us from the Bible and then became the basis of this extraordinary play that Oscar Wilde wrote that explodes with language of people describing things they can’t have. The composer Richard Strauss saw a production of this unique play and was seized by the idea of making it the basis of the libretto. He found a way of harnessing what Oscar Wilde did with his words with truly revolutionary music. It was exciting to bring that energy into this moment and all the issues that are floating around our space, and seeing how these characters are navigating the dynamics of creativity, desire and power,” adds Egoyan.
Seven Veils made its world premiere at the 2023 Toronto Film Festival, and went on to play Berlin last February. The movie also stars Rebecca Liddiard, Douglas Smith, Mark O’Brien, Vinessa Antoine, Ambur Braid and Michael Kupfer-Radecky. Pic is produced by Egoyan, Niv Fichman, Simone Urdl, Kevin Krikst and Fraser Ash. EPs are Nate Bolotin, Maxime Cottray, Adrian Love, Noah Segal, John Sloss, Nick Spicer and Aram Tertzakian.
Seven Veils is produced by Rhombus Media and Ego Film Arts, with the participation of Telefilm Canada and Ontario Creates, in association with IPR.VC, Cinetic Media, Crave and the Canadian Opera Company.
Elevation Pictures is releasing Seven Veils in Canada.