{"id":676059,"date":"2026-05-17T19:05:17","date_gmt":"2026-05-17T19:05:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/676059\/"},"modified":"2026-05-17T19:05:17","modified_gmt":"2026-05-17T19:05:17","slug":"boyd-holbrook-and-atonement-director-talk-cannes-iraq-war-drama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/676059\/","title":{"rendered":"Boyd Holbrook and \u2019Atonement\u2019 Director Talk Cannes Iraq War Drama"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tWartime has always had a prominent place onscreen. Less prominent are films that tackle the aftermath of war. Movies like\u00a0The Deer Hunter\u00a0and\u00a0The Best Years of Our Lives\u00a0show the difficult transition back home after the battlefield. Even rarer is a film like\u00a0Atonement<\/a>, the feature debut for director Reed Van Dyk, which sees the returning soldier battling his own demons while coming face-to-face with people whose lives were devastated by his actions.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tBased on a\u00a0New Yorker\u00a0article from Dexter Filkins,\u00a0Atonement\u00a0follows Second lieutenant Lou D\u2019Alessandro (Lu Lobello, in real life) who, during a firefight at the beginning of the invasion of Iraq, shoots on cars crossing at an intersection, killing three men in the multigenerational Khachaturian family (Kachadoorian, in real life), Iraqi civilians trying to find shelter after an explosion destroyed parts of their home. Back in the United States, the Marine, who is suffering from PTSD and panic attacks, finds out that some of the surviving Khachaturians immigrated to the United States and reaches out to meet them, with the hope of finding forgiveness.<\/p>\n

\n\tVan Dyk read Filkins\u2019 original story while in his Los Angeles apartment. \u201cI couldn\u2019t stop crying,\u201d he says, but adds, \u201cI was in no position at that time to make a movie.\u201d He later went to UCLA for film school and made several short films, one of which,\u00a0DeKalb Elementary, received an Oscar nomination in 2018. He often thought about the soldier and the Kachadoorians, and \u201cwhen I had anybody to support and help me figure out how to make a feature, I asked.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tDetermined to make it his feature directorial debut, it was important for Van Dyk to reach out to the real people at the center of the story. \u201cI didn\u2019t want to open up these old wounds for them without being certain that I was wanting to breathe life into this as a film.\u201d He flew out to New York to have dinner with Filkins and drove to Las Vegas to sit with Lobello. He came to know the Kachadoorians best, as they lived only 20 minutes from each other in Los Angeles. Says the filmmaker: \u201cIt was a beautiful process of, over years, talking to them, getting their\u202fblessing.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tVan Dyk placed a particular importance on realizing early invasion Baghdad. The city onscreen so often acts as, he says, \u201cbackdrop for American stories.\u201d He and his cinematographer traveled to Baghdad for a scouting trip, with a reading list from Iraqi authors. The six-hour documentary from Abbas Fahdel,\u00a0Homeland: Iraq Year Zero, was a principal source. \u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe director also spoke with Marines to bring authenticity to the film\u2019s central firefight, avoiding Hollywood\u2019s well-worn battlefield stereotypes. These, says the director, can look more akin to a sporting events where \u201cit is their side, our side. Who\u2019s up and who\u2019s down.\u201d He focused instead on just the Americans pulling the trigger, intending for the sequence to hue closer to a documentary. Or, at the very least, \u201ccloser to the truth than I\u2019m accustomed to seeing in movies, where Iraqis are often looked at through the sniper\u202fscope.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAs for casting, Van Dyk was not familiar with Boyd Holbrook<\/a>\u2019s best-known work, like the Marvel movie\u00a0Logan, and the long-running Netflix series\u00a0Narcos. Instead, he first clocked Holbrook in a small role in Jeff Nichols\u2019 motorcycle period piece\u00a0The Bikeriders. \u201cI left the theater talking about him. I said, \u2018I saw that guy in an Indiana Jones movie [Dial of Destiny] and he was nothing like he was in that.\u2019\u202f\u201d Shortly after, the director saw Holbrook playing Johnny Cash in the Bob Dylan biopic\u00a0A Complete Unknown, and was astounded by the actor\u2019s range. Says Van Dyk: \u201cI was just like, \u2018This guy can do anything.\u2019 He\u2019s a character and really puts his shoulder into finding the body and movement and voice of that\u202fperson.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe was confident that Holbrook, who is prolific but often cast as a supporting character, could carry this film.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tFor his part, Holbrook was drawn to Van Dyk\u2019s more nuanced perspective on a wartime film. \u201cWe see so many monetized versions of war. This is something that you never get to see,\u201d says the actor. Ultimately, he was drawn to Lou\u2019s search for absolution: \u201cI\u2019m going to, face to face, meet these people and put myself\u202faside.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe role was physically daunting. First there was the firefight, which was shot on location in Jordan, which doubled for Iraq. Holbrook wore 40 pounds of gear in over 100-degree heat. But, he says, the awkwardness and discomfort lent to the practicalities of war that the filmmakers were hoping to capture. \u201cIt was not, \u2018I\u2019m going to look like a cool soldier.\u2019 That\u2019s the whole antithesis of the vibe that Reed wanted.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tVan Dyk pushed to have the Jordan sequences film first, allowing Holbrook to draw on those scenes for the second half of the film that sees Lou back in the United States, struggling with the memories he has from Iraq, plagued by panic attacks.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tHolbrook, who signed on to the film only two months before shooting began, thought, \u201cI\u2019m not going to be able to fake a panic attack.\u201d He prepped breath work that would \u201ckick in this diaphragm thing,\u201d working himself up to the point where it felt like he was having a panic attack, and would sustain. He remembers sustaining what felt like an attack for over two hours, saying, \u201cI got into such a place that I couldn\u2019t control what I was physically going\u202fthrough.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSays Van Dyk, \u201cWhen you have an actor committed in this way, where the body more than the mind is believing the circumstances of the story, my job in that case is to try to move through the scene as quickly as we can and stay out of his way.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tOpposite Holbrook is Palestinian actress Hiam Abbass, playing the matriarch of the Khachaturian family, with whom Lou has the climactic meeting. \u201cI wanted to do the actor-y thing and not meet her until Lou met her [in the script],\u201d says Holbrook of trying to avoid Abbass. But they were filming in Jordan at the same time and decided it was best they got to know each other. \u201cI was so happy that I did, because I\u2019ve got to understand her and her story, so when it came time to do our big scene, we didn\u2019t need any rehearsal.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tLike in the original\u00a0New Yorker\u00a0story,\u00a0Atonement\u00a0builds to the meeting between Lou and the surviving Khachaturians, a potent mix of unrealized emotion and catharsis.\u00a0The Hollywood Reporter\u00a0review of the film, which premiered in Directors\u2019 Fortnight, singled out the scene: \u201cAbbass gives a master class in less-is-more restraint in these scenes, her character\u2019s fortitude severely challenged but unbroken by her years of suffering.\u201d Meanwhile, Holbrook is \u201ca bundle of exposed nerves as he reckons with his own guilt and with the tremendous weight of grief and anger on the Iraqi family.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAtonement\u2019s aim to show an atypical onscreen depiction of war and its aftermath is realized in this moment.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tSays Van Dyk: \u201cThere\u2019s something that was really profound about two people on opposite sides of a war coming together in a living room and, almost in spite of themselves, reaching for each other.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wartime has always had a prominent place onscreen. Less prominent are films that tackle the aftermath of war.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":676060,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[44477,49,48,43877,225439,75,337],"class_list":["post-676059","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-boyd-holbrook","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-cannes","tag-cannes-2026","tag-entertainment","tag-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/676059","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=676059"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/676059\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/676060"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=676059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=676059"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=676059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}