Based on the play by Wajdi Mouawad, Incendies is a politically powerful melodrama that plays out over several decades in an unnamed Middle Eastern country torn apart by civil war.
In travelling to the Middle East to fulfill their mother’s last wishes, twins Jeanne and Simon discover how little they knew of her life before she migrated to Canada. Family histories unravel as Jeanne (Mélissa Désormeaux-Poulin – Gabrielle, The Far Shore) and Simon (Maxim Gaudette – Lac Mystère, Polytechnique) look to deliver letters in (an unnamed) Lebanon to a brother they didn’t know they had and a father they had been told was long dead. The revelations of the terrible sufferings Nawal (Lubna Azabel – Body of Lies, Strangers) faced during the civil war leave them struggling to cope.
An early feature from director Denis Villeneuve (Prisoners, Sicario), Incendies is a compelling narrative of one woman’s struggle to survive in a prejudicial and judgemental world of war, violence and tradition.
Nominated for best foreign language Oscar in 2011.
Rating: 78%
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