Incendies

Following the death of their mother, Nawal, an Arab immigrant in Canada, Jeanne and her twin brother Simon meet with French Canadian notary Jean Lebel, their mother's employer and family friend. Nawal's will refers to not keeping a promise, denying her a proper gravestone and casket, unless Jeanne and Simon track down their mysterious brother, of whose existence they were previously unaware, and their father, who they believed was dead. Nawal has left two letters; one is to be delivered to Jeanne and Simon's father, and the other is to be delivered to their brother. Jeanne accepts; Simon, on the other hand, seemingly having had a more difficult relationship with Nawal and her unusual personality, is reluctant to join Jeanne on this pursuit. Nawal came from a Christian family in a Levantine country, and she fell in love with a refugee named Wahab, resulting in her pregnancy. Her family murders her lover and nearly shoots her in an honour killing, but her grandmother spares her, making her promise to leave the village after her baby's birth and start a new life in the city of Daresh. The grandmother tattoos the back of the baby's heel and sends him to an orphanage in Kfar Khout. While Nawal is at university in Daresh a few years later, civil war and war crimes break out, with Nawal opposing the war on human rights grounds. Her son's orphanage is destroyed by Muslim militants. Nawal leaves Daresh to try to find her son and boards a bus full of Muslim refugees. Christian Nationalists shoot the driver and fire into the bus full of passengers, only missing Nawal and a mother with her daughter. As the Nationalists prepare to set the bus on fire, the survivors try to escape towards the back of the bus. Nawal shows her crucifix and tells the Nationalists that she is Christian. She attempts to save the girl by claiming her as her own, but the girl runs towards the burning bus, calling for her mother, and is shot dead. Nawal finds her way back to town and joins the Muslim fighters. She tutors the son of a nationalist leader, eventually earning enough trust to smuggle in a gun to shoot the leader. She is imprisoned in Kfar Ryat and sings through the screams of other prisoners, earning her the nickname "The Woman Who Sings". To attempt to break her, she is raped by torturer Abou Tarek who leaves her saying, "sing now". She consequently gives birth to the twins. After traveling to her mother's native country, Jeanne gradually uncovers this past and persuades Simon to join her. With help from Lebel, they learn their brother's name is Nihad of May (the month he was born in) and track down Chamseddine. Simon meets with him and Chamseddine reveals that he attacked the orphanage in Kfar Khout, where he spares the children and converts Nihad into an Islamic child soldier. He then reveals the war-mad Nihad was captured by the nationalists, turned by them, trained as a torturer, and then sent to Kfar Ryat, where he took the name Abou Tarek, making him both the twins' maternal half-brother and father; as such, both letters are addressed to the same person. Like Nawal, Nihad's superiors gave him a new life in Canada after the war. By chance, Nawal encountered him at a Canadian swimming pool and saw both the tattoo and his face, realizing her long-lost son was her rapist all along. The shock of learning the truth caused Nawal to suffer a stroke, which led to her decline and untimely death at age 60. The twins find Nihad in Canada and deliver Nawal's letters to him. He opens both of them; the first letter addresses him as the twins' father, the rapist, and is filled with contempt. The second letter addresses him as the twins' brother and is instead written with caring words, saying that he, as Nawal's son, is deserving of love. Horrified at the truth, Nihad tries to chase after the twins, but they are gone. Nawal gets her gravestone. Sometime later, Nihad visits it. ==Cast==

Development adapted Wajdi Mouawad's play Incendies after seeing it performed in Montreal in 2004. Parts of the story were based on the life of Souha Bechara. The story is based on events that happened during the Lebanese Civil War of 1975 to 1990, but the filmmakers attempted to make the location of the plot ambiguous. Director Denis Villeneuve first saw Wajdi Mouawad's play Incendies at Théâtre de Quat'Sous in Montreal in 2004, commenting "I had this strong intuition that I was in front of a masterpiece". In adapting the screenplay, Villeneuve, while keeping the story structure and characters, replaced "all" the dialogue, even envisioning a silent film, abandoning the idea due to expense. Mouawad later praised the film as "brilliantly elegant" and gave Villeneuve full credit. The project had a budget of $6.5 million, Casting was cast as Nawal after an extensive search, and won Best Actress at Belgium's Magritte Awards and Canada's Genie Awards. For the part of Nawal, Villeneuve said he conducted an extensive search for actresses across Canada. He finally met Lubna Azabal, a Belgian actress of Moroccan—Spanish descent in Paris, intrigued by her "expressive and eloquent" face in Paradise Now (2005). Montreal actor Allen Altman, who played a notary, worked with a dialect coach for hours to develop a blend of the French and Arab accents before auditioning. While shooting in Jordan, to research his role, actor Maxim Gaudette toured a Palestinian camp near Amman. Filming was done in Amman. The film was shot in Montreal and Jordan. For the scenes filmed in Jordan, Villeneuve used a Lebanese and Iraqi crew, though he feared the war scenes would be too reminiscent of bad experiences for them. However, he said the Arab crew members felt "It's important that those sorts of stories are on the screen". Some of the filming in Jordan took place in the capital of Amman. The music was considered so notable and integral to the film that the music was mentioned in many reviews. Film critic David Ehrlich wrote that "Incendies exploits Radiohead tracks for the multiplicity of their meaning, empowering the image by dislocating viewers from it". Villeneuve said that he had written "You and Whose Army?" into the script from the beginning, as it was intended to make it "clear that [the film] will be a westerner's point of view about this world". One music reviewer gave it first place in their "Top Ten Music Moments in Film". ==Release==

Incendies was officially selected to play in the 67th Venice International Film Festival, 2010 Telluride Film Festival, 2010 Toronto International Film Festival, 2011 Sundance Film Festival and 2011 New Directors/New Films Festival. The film opened in Toronto and Vancouver in January 2011. ==Reception==

Box office In Canada, the film had passed the $1-million mark at the box office by October 2010. By the end of April 2011, the film grossed $4.7 million. In Quebec theatres alone, Incendies made $3 million. According to The Numbers, the film grossed $6,857,096 in North America and $9,181,247 in other territories for a worldwide total of $16,038,343. On Metacritic the film has a weighted average score of 80 out 100 based on 42 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews". The film enjoyed a positive reception in its country and province. Kevin N. Laforest of the Montreal Film Journal gave it 3.5 stars out of four and wrote, "Villeneuve has done his best work yet here". The Montreal Gazette's Brendan Kelly gave the film five stars and called it a "masterwork". Marc Cassivi of La Presse claimed the film transcended the play. Peter Howell, writing for The Toronto Star, gave the film four stars, called it "a commanding film of multiple revelations", and the best of 2010, and praised Lubna Azabal as "first amongst equals". However, Martin Morrow of CBC News was unimpressed, saying, "Villeneuve's screen adaptation strips away all this finely textured flesh and leaves only the bare bones". University of Berlin film scholar Claudia Kotte wrote that the film, along with Monsieur Lazhar (2011) and War Witch (2012), represent a break in the Cinema of Quebec from focus on local history to global concerns, with Incendies adding Oedipal themes. Authors Gada Mahrouse, Chantal Maillé and Daniel Salée wrote McCraw and Déry's films, Incendies, Monsieur Lazhar and ''Inch'Allah'', depict Quebec as part of the global village and as accepting minorities, particularly Middle Easterners or "Muslim Others". Roger Ebert gave the film three and a half stars, saying "it wants to be much more than a thriller and succeeds in demonstrating how senseless and futile it is to hate others because of their religion", and Azabal "is never less than compelling". He later selected the film as his favourite to win the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, though it lost to In a Better World from Denmark. Leonard Maltin also gave the film three and a half stars, referring to it as "tough, spellbinding". Ty Burr, writing for The Boston Globe, gave the film three and a half stars, praising a bus scene as harrowing but saying the climax is "a plot twist that feels like one coincidence too far", that "leaves the audience doing math on their fingers rather than reeling in shock". Incendies was named by Stephen Holden of The New York Times as one of the 10 best films of 2011. Betsy Sharkey of the Los Angeles Times called it Villeneuve's "best-realized work yet". A number of reviews complimented use of the song "You and Whose Army?" by Radiohead. Criticisms have included charges of melodrama and orientalism. Accolades On 22 September 2010, Incendies was chosen to represent Canada at the 83rd Academy Awards in the category of Best Foreign Language Film. It made the shortlist on 19 January 2011, one of nine films and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film on 25 January 2011. It won eight awards at the 31st Genie Awards, including Best Motion Picture, Best Actress for Azabal and Best Director for Villeneuve. Along with Incendies, Villeneuve won the Rogers Best Canadian Film Award in 2009 for the film Polytechnique, the first Canadian filmmaker to win it twice in a row. Incendies also won the Prix Jutra for Best Film, Director, Screenplay, Actress (Azabal), Editing, Cinematography, Art Direction, Costumes and Sound. It is also the only film to date to have won both the Toronto International Film Festival Award for Best Canadian Film and the Vancouver International Film Festival Award for Best Canadian Film. In 2025, it was one of the films voted for the "Readers' Choice" edition of The New York Times list of "The 100 Best Movies of the 21st Century," finishing at number 127. ==See also==