The nature of truth can be murky, and that of historical truth even more so. If the facts contradict the "official" version of an event, but no one knows or remembers or even cares, do those facts have meaning?

This is a central theme of Ararat, Canadian auteur Egoyan's latest, which revolves around a group of filmmakers shooting a movie about the Turkish genocide of Armenians in 1915, the 20th century's first such tragedy and a ghastly preview of the many horrors to come-and, shockingly, a crime still denied by Turkey. Told in Egoyan's typically complex, elliptical style (see Exotica, The Sweet Hereafter), Ararat balances the depiction of the genocide, presented as "footage" from the film-within-the-film, with several interlocking stories in the present, all involving the search for, and denial of, the truth.

Perhaps Egoyan's most personal film to date (Egoyan and many in his cast, including Aznavour and Khanijan, are of Armenian descent), Ararat is highly ambitious and consistently powerful, which helps cover for those moments in the script that veer toward didactic history lesson. The cast is stellar, particularly the venerable Aznavour, as the film-within-the-film’s director, and Plummer, as a customs officer who comes to have his own peculiar connection to the production. One caveat: Although Egoyan provides some measure of emotional distance by containing the story of the genocide within the film-within-the-film, these scenes are nonetheless upsetting and hard to sit through.

— Chris Cronis