Atonement is a 2007 British romantic drama war film directed by Joe Wright. It is a film adaptation of the 2001 novel of the same name by Ian McEwan. The film stars James McAvoy, Keira Knightley, and Saoirse Ronan. It was produced by Working Title Films and filmed throughout the summer of 2006 in England and France. Distributed in most of the world by Universal Pictures, it was released in the United Kingdom and Ireland on 7 September 2007, and in North America on 7 December 2007.

Atonement opened the 64th Venice International Film Festival, making Wright, at the age of 35, the youngest director ever to open the event. The film also opened the 2007 Vancouver International Film Festival.

The film won an Oscar for the Best Original Score at the 80th Academy Awards, and was nominated for six others, including Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Supporting Actress (Saoirse Ronan). At the 61st British Academy Film Awards it won Best Film and Production Design awards.

In 1935, Briony Tallis (Saoirse Ronan), a 13-year-old girl from a wealthy English family, has just finished writing a play. As Briony attempts to stage the play with her cousins, they get bored and decide to go swimming. Briony stays behind and witnesses a significant moment of sexual tension between her older sister, Cecilia (Keira Knightley), and Robbie Turner, a servant's son (James McAvoy), a man Briony has a childish crush on. Robbie returns home and writes several drafts of letters to Cecilia, including one that is explicit and erotically charged. He does not, however, intend to send it and sets it aside. On his way to join the Tallis family celebration, Robbie asks Briony to deliver his letter, only to later realise that he has mistakenly given her the prurient draft. Briony secretly reads the letter and becomes still more suspicious of Robbie's intentions.

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A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects. The process of filmmaking has developed into an art form and industry.

Films are cultural artifacts created by specific cultures, which reflect those cultures, and, in turn, affect them. Film is considered to be an important art form, a source of popular entertainment and a powerful method for educating – or indoctrinating – citizens. The visual elements of cinema give motion pictures a universal power of communication. Some films have become popular worldwide attractions by using dubbing or subtitles that translate the dialogue into the language of the viewer.

Films are made up of a series of individual images called frames. When these images are shown rapidly in succession, a viewer has the illusion that motion is occurring. The viewer cannot see the flickering between frames due to an effect known as persistence of vision, whereby the eye retains a visual image for a fraction of a second after the source has been removed. Viewers perceive motion due to a psychological effect called beta movement.