Next of Kin

Atom Egoyan’s striking debut finds the director already working through the themes of technology, isolation, and identity that recur obsessively throughout his work. Peter (Patrick Tierney) is catatonically unhappy with his family life and in video therapy with his parents. One day he views the tapes of an Armenian family who guiltily put their infant son up for adoption years ago. Peter decides to present himself to them as their lost son in a quest to act out a role different than the one assigned to him in his own miserable existence.