Overview
- Atonement premieres in Directors’ Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival, a sidebar that highlights emerging filmmakers, as Reed Van Dyk’s first feature.
- The story tracks a deadly Iraq War firefight that devastates an Iraqi family and a U.S. Marine’s later effort to seek reconciliation with help from a New Yorker journalist.
- Hiam Abbass portrays Mariam, Boyd Holbrook plays the Marine named Lou, and Kenneth Branagh appears as journalist Michael.
- Van Dyk builds the film in four acts from shifting viewpoints to focus on the aftermath and what he describes as moral injuries rather than physical wounds.
- The film is being offered to buyers at Cannes, with trade outlets reporting different sales lineups that include CAA Media Finance with either Goodfellas or WME and The Veterans.