Wealth & Money Quote by Atom Egoyan

Toronto’s film ecosystem, Atom Egoyan suggests, has a problem most artists are never accused of having: too much help. The sting in his phrasing is in “easy” and “more money than it needs” - not a moral panic about public funding, but a director’s suspicion that comfort breeds bloat. Egoyan is pointing at a structural irony of well-intentioned cultural policy: when financing is plentiful and routinized, a project can inflate to match the cash instead of sharpening to fit the idea.

The subtext is craft. Constraints force choices; choices create style. Egoyan, whose films are often controlled, psychologically precise machines, is implying that overfunding dulls that edge. Extra money can mean extra shooting days, extra coverage, extra “fix it in post” logic - all of which tempt a film away from the hard work of decision-making. When no one has to fight for every dollar, no one has to fight for every scene.

Context matters: Toronto isn’t just a city; it’s a hub with institutions, grants, tax credits, broadcasters, and co-production pipelines. That infrastructure can be a lifeline, especially for national cinema competing with Hollywood gravity. Egoyan isn’t denying that. He’s warning that an ecosystem designed to enable production can accidentally incentivize production over purpose. The quiet provocation is aimed less at artists than at the gatekeepers: if funding is meant to protect risk, it should reward clarity and necessity, not scale for its own sake.