Their names are often mentioned in the same breath.

Atom Egoyan has cited fellow Toronto filmmaker David Cronenberg as a mentor. As Egoyan’s career evolved, he has also become a friend and even an unwitting rival to the Master of the Macabre.

‘I love Atom personally, and I love his filmmaking, too,’ Cronenberg tells Playback. ‘Even though there’s nothing retro about his filmmaking, he is a kind of a throwback to a wonderful era of filmmaking, which was in the ’50s and ’60s – the art film – the era of Bergman and Fellini and Kurosawa that so inspired us all and really set the bar. Atom has been very faithful to that.’

If there is one way in which the 66-year-old director has influenced Egoyan, it might be in that he has shown that, with public funding support, it is possible to have an international filmmaking career in Canada.

In the 1990s, the two auteurs led a movement that helped Canuck cinema make a mark on the global stage: Egoyan with Exotica, The Sweet Hereafter and Felicia’s Journey, and Cronenberg with Naked Lunch, Crash and eXistenZ. Those films also gave the Great White North a reputation for dark films with a rather twisted sexuality.

It begs the question as to what makes the filmmakers lean toward the sinister.

‘We come from very different backgrounds, but we are still very formed by our life in Canada,’ Cronenberg muses. ‘Of course [we Canadians] have always defined ourselves against America in some ways, but Atom and I both look much more to Europe. Literally, in Toronto we are halfway between Hollywood and Europe, and I think our filmmaking shows that.’

At times over the years the directors have found themselves in competition with one another, whether it’s been for prime festival placement or Genie Awards.

‘It’s so hard to make a movie and to get through it that our relationship is totally one of support. Something like an awards-giving evening is just a blip on the radar,’ Cronenberg says. ‘We don’t consider ourselves rivals.’

Cronenberg names Exotica his favorite film by his friend. ‘It just seemed to be firing on many, many cylinders, and I was very affected by it,’ he says.

He is surprised above all that Egoyan has been at it for 25 years already.

‘He is still such a kid, it’s great,’ he says. ‘And his enthusiasm is forever young, and that is a really important part of him.’