Adapted from Wajdi Mouawad's play of the same name, Incendies stars Lubna Azabal, Mélissa Désormeaux-Poulin, Maxim Gaudette, and Rémy Girard. The Academy Award-nominated Incendies, by Quebecois filmmaker Denis Villeneuve, unforgettably portrays the Lebanese civil war as an operatic Greek tragedy. Scavenger Hunt for Family Secrets Across Time and Geography, Mélissa Désormeaux-Poulin as a daughter who travels from Canada to the Mideast, in Denis Villeneuve's “Incendies.”. incendies bilingual ca denis villeneuve dvd - The Globe and Mail", "OSCARS 2011: 'Incendies' Director Denis Villeneuve", "Incendies: Universal tragedy with fire in its heart", "Author of Incendies, the play, praises movie version", "Denis Villeneuve's 'Incendies' nominated for Best Foreign Film", "Blood lines: Denis Villeneuve on Incendies", https://people.orange.fr/star/lubna-azabal-CNT00000051bmT/, "How Incendies changed Mélissa Désormeaux-Poulin's life", "Allen Altman gets fired up about Oscar-nominated 'Incendies, "Incendies Passes $1M Mark at the Canadian Box Office", "Hot Sheet: Top 5 Canadian Films (April 23 – April 29, 2011)", "Movie review: Villeneuve's 'Incendies' a masterful film", "Roger Ebert picks Canadian film as Oscar favourite", "A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Horror", "9 Foreign Language Films Continue to Oscar Race", "Villeneuve's Incendies wins eight Genies, including best picture", "Incendies best Canadian film: Toronto critics", "Incendies wins 10 Evening News International Award for Best Feature Film", British Academy of Film and Television Arts, "Le film Incendies est finaliste pour un César", "Italy's Davide di Donatello Nominations Announced", "Incendies, Barney's Version dominate Genies", "Incendies is Rotterdam 2011 audiences' favourite; 340,000 visits to anniversary edition", "New York Film Critics Can't Wait to Give Their Top Prizes to The Artist", "Le film Incendies de Denis Villeneuve remporte trois prix à la Semaine du cinéma international de Valladolid", Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television for Best Motion Picture, The Best Damn Fiddler from Calabogie to Kaladar, Boston Society of Film Critics Award for Best Non-English Language Film, Lumières Award for Best French-Language Film, Toronto Film Critics Association's Rogers Award for Best Canadian Film, The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open, Toronto International Film Festival Award for Best Canadian Film, Canada's Sweetheart: The Saga of Hal C. Banks, Those Who Make Revolution Halfway Only Dig Their Own Graves, Vancouver Film Critics Circle Award for Best Canadian Film, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Incendies&oldid=999001057, Best Picture Genie and Canadian Screen Award winners, Best French-Language Film Lumières Award winners, Official website different in Wikidata and Wikipedia, Articles with French-language sources (fr), Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, International Award for Best Feature Film, Sylvain Bellemare, Jean Umansky and Jean-Pierre Laforce, Abdelghafour Elaaziz as Abou Talek/Nihad "Nihad de Mai" Harmanni, Mher Karakashian as Chamseddine's assistant, This page was last edited on 8 January 2021, at 01:08. After travelling to her mother's native country, Jeanne gradually uncovers this past, and persuades Simon to join her. Lebel — along with a Lebanese colleague, a fellow member of a global fraternity of dutiful document filers and data organizers — represents a way of engaging the world that is fundamentally opposed to the chaos and cruelty that defined Nawal’s homeland during her time there. Adapted from Wajdi Mouawad's play of the same name, Incendies stars Lubna Azabal, Mélissa Désormeaux-Poulin, Maxim Gaudette, and Rémy Girard. [11] Mouawad later praised the film as "brilliantly elegant" and gave Villeneuve full credit. Nawal gets her gravestone in the aftermath of the letters being sent. Judged by strictly naturalistic standards, the flurry of revelations and coincidences that wrap up the double story may seem implausible. The film was shot mainly in Montreal, with a few days spent in Jordan. Before Incendies, Villeneuve made Polytechnique (2009), a true story about the slaughter of students, mostly women, by a young man resentful of feminists at a Montreal university. Her family murders her lover and nearly shoots her as an honour killing, but her grandmother spares her, making her promise to leave the village after the birth of her baby and start a new life in the fictional city of Daresh. Villeneuve first attended “Incendies,’’ known in English as “Scorched,’’ without any professional motive. Jeanne accepts; Simon, on the other hand, seemingly having had a more difficult relationship with Nawal and her apparently unusual personality, is reluctant to join Jeanne on this pursuit. While the country is unnamed, the events in the film are heavily influenced by the Lebanese Civil War and particularly the story of prisoner Souha Bechara. [12] The project had a budget of $6.5 million,[3] and received funding from Telefilm Canada. Parts of the story were based on the life of Souha Bechara. Review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes reports 93% positive reviews based on 121 reviews, with an average rating of 7.92/10. The ghost referred by the villagers as ‘stree’ is the ghost of a woman who worked as a prostitute in the village many years ago. It all feels so authentic, and so perfectly (and interestingly) structured as a puzzle-mystery that still delivers layer upon layer of emotional punch and themes. The film Incendies, written and directed by Denis VILLENEUVE and inspired by Wajdi MOUAWAD's play, opened in 2010. No, it is not a reference to Tarkovsky's Nostalghia.Disguised as a story set in turbulent times about the quest of a pair of twins embarking on a revelatory journey to fulfill their mother's last request, at its core, Incendies is a story about an admirable woman. [28] 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". incendies le sang des promesses 2 by wajdi mouawad. Simon (Maxim Gaudette) is told to give his to a brother they didn't know they had. Even in French, the phrase “heroic Canadian notary” sounds like a punch line, but it fits this man exactly and also illuminates one of the movies crucial themes. What could help them understand this legacy and move beyond it? Denis Villeneuve, the director of "Incendies," discusses his family drama. But if “Incendies” were her story alone, it might have been too much: an overwrought and awkward slog through a bloody stretch of the past. [9], In the United States, the film was distributed by Sony Pictures Classics. It won eight awards at the 31st Genie Awards, including Best Motion Picture, Best Actress for Azabal and Best Director for Villeneuve. [5][6][7] 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. Nawal's will makes reference to not keeping a promise, denying her a proper gravestone and casket, unless Jeanne and Simon track down their mysterious brother, whose existence they were previously unaware of, and their father, whom they believed was dead. [9] He showed Mouawad some completed scenes to convince the initially reluctant playwright to grant permission for the film. Adapted from Wajdi Mouawad's play, Incendies is structured as a detective story. 1 + 1 = 1. It spans four centuries and five countries as it tells the story of a mysterious red-coloured violin and its many owners. They also display his sensitive eye for landscape (the non-Canadian sections were shot in Jordan) and his discreet use of digital effects to simulate the large-scale effects of war. The perspective of Jeanne and Simon, modern Canadians wholly unaware of their roots in that history, makes the film into something more elusive and complex, a meditation on memory and identity that recalls some of the recent films of Atom Egoyan. [11] Before Incendies, Désormeaux-Poulin was mainly known for "light fare". When their mother, Nawal (Lubna Azabal), dies, Jeanne and Simon Marwan (Mélissa Désormeaux-Poulin and Maxim Gaudette), twins who have grown up Canadian, discover that her last will and testament requires them to set off on a kind of scavenger hunt across time and geography. A series of flashbacks reveal Nawal came from a Christian Arab family in an unnamed Middle Eastern country, and that she fell in love with a refugee named Wahab, resulting in her pregnancy. Those chapters, shifting from hillside villages to cities and refugee camps, from the verdant north of the country to its dusty south, give Mr. Villeneuve’s film novelistic depth and epic expansiveness. [36] Incendies was named by Stephen Holden of The New York Times as one of the 10 best films of 2011. [27] Marc Cassivi of La Presse claimed the film transcended the play. [19], In Canada, the film passed the $1 million mark at the box office by October 2010. [21] By the end of April 2011, the film grossed $4.7 million. incendies 2010 a sky of books and movies. A Canada-France coproduction shot in Montréal and Jordan, it describes the shattering quest of a pair of twins. Many people might say Incendies is a story about war because this film contains complicated issues that today’s war is supposed to combine: ideology, religion, violence and history. Among the film’s subjects is kinship, the often painful ways that bonds of blood connect strangers and enemies. [20] The film opened in Toronto and Vancouver in January 2011. It is a quest narrative, about children searching out the mysteries of their parentage, and also the story of a resourceful heroine, the mother of those children, surviving an almost unimaginable series of ordeals. [37] Betsy Sharkey of the Los Angeles Times called it Villeneuve’s "best-realized work yet". Incendies, Denis Villeneuve, 131 mins (1 [33] He later selected the film as his favourite to win the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film,[34] though it lost to In a Better World from Denmark. Incendies Villeneuve is a gentleman when it comes to respect the genre he plays in. Like Nawal, Nihad's superiors gave him a new life in Canada after the war. While Nawal is at university in Daresh, a civil war and war crimes break out with Nawal opposing the war on human rights grounds. "Incendies" occasionally reveals its theatrical origins but on the whole is re-imagined through vivid cinematic sequences. [31] 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". [41], On 22 September 2010, Incendies was chosen to represent Canada at the 83rd Academy Awards in the category of Best Foreign Language Film. In 2011, it was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Incendies is the story of Nawal Marwan (Lubna Azabal) as revealed to her twins, Jeanne and Simon (Mélissa Désormeaux-Poulin, Maxim Gaudette) after her death. It is nearly impossible to imagine him either subjected to or responsible for any kind of atrocity. Her son's orphanage in Kfar Khout is destroyed by a Muslim militant, Chamseddine, who converts him into an Islamic child soldier. [10] 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. The twins are encouraged and assisted in their quest by Jean Lebel (Rémy Girard) the avuncular notary who had been their mother’s employer for many years. The instrument, made in Cremona in 1681 with a future forecast by tarot cards, makes its way to Montreal in 1997, where an appraiser identifies it and it goes to auction. With help from Lebel, they learn their brother's name is Nihad of May and track down Chamseddine. However, he said the Arab crew members felt "It’s important that those sorts of stories are on the screen". [26] The Montreal Gazette's Brendan Kelly gave the film five stars and called it a "masterwork". Denis Villeneuve Week continues here on Plot and Theme with Incendies, the final foreign language film from the director, and his only film to receive an Oscar nod (Best Foreign Language film in 2010). Benicio Del Toro also appears in this film, in which Josh Hutcherson plays a young man who falls in love with a girl only to discover that she is the niece of the notorious Pablo Escobar. [8][9], 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". She is imprisoned in Kfar Ryat and raped by torturer Abou Tareq, consequently giving birth to the twins. by Radiohead. And though “Incendies” provides an unflinching account of brutality, it also suggests that to keep such an account can be a transformative act of kindness. The story concerns Canadian twins who travel to their mother's native country in the Middle East to uncover her hidden past amidst a bloody civil war. But “I was totally astonished by the power of the story. In fact, he respects the whole system, even the hefty hectic part of the film. — But strict verisimilitude would not serve the dramatic ends that “Incendies,” based on a play of the same name by Wajdi Mouawad, sets out to serve. [3] It was considered a success in the country. [4], Incendies received highly positive reviews from critics. Denis Villeneuve’s “Incendies,” a film very much occupied with some of the grisly realities of recent history, nonetheless has the structure, and some of the atmosphere, of an ancient folk tale. Denis Villeneuve2010 | Canada/France | Drama / Mystery / War | 131 mins | 1.85:1 | French, Arabic & EnglishM18 (passed clean) for… It met with critical acclaim in Canada and abroad and won numerous awards. Incendies is a French-Canadian film that was nominated for a 2010 Academy Award. Leonard Maltin also gave the film three and a half stars, referring to it as "tough, spellbinding". The film tells the story of twins who receive a cryptic message in their mother’s will: their father and brother are still alive, and the twins must seek them out and deliver letters to them. [9] Villeneuve acknowledged unfamiliarity with Arab culture, but was drawn to Incendies as "a modern story with a sort of Greek tragedy element". "Incendies" is a mystery story that is brief but yet long, subtle but straightforward. One of the flashbacks in which … I will leave the plot line out for the benefit of the audience. The movie “Stree” is a nice one with horror and entertainment. [14] He finally met Lubna Azabal, a Belgian actress of Moroccan—Spanish descent[15] in Paris, intrigued by her "expressive and eloquent" face in Paradise Now (2005). Incendies is a 2010 Canadian war thriller film directed by Denis Villeneuve, who co-wrote the screenplay with Valérie Beaugrand-Champagne. Incendies is in essence a family drama, astonishingly intense but impressively poised. The site's critics consensus reads, "It's messy, overlong, and a touch melodramatic, but those flaws pale before Incendies' impressive acting and devastating emotional impact. Though its details are fictional, this chronicle is impressively nuanced in its rendering of Lebanese politics and society in the 1970s and ’80s. The film is in French/Arabic, so English viewers will have to go by the sub-titles. The director separate the film shooting evenly between indoor and outdoor environment. This work may be tedious, but it can also be profoundly humane. 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. 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