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Friday 15 April 2011 8:48AM (view full episode)

Denis Villeneuve is a young French-Canadian director whose film Incendies brings a remarkable drama to the screen.

In chilly Montreal, a brother and sister are summoned to hear their mother's will. They are each given a letter to deliver: one must find a father they had believed dead; the other a brother they never knew they had.

Their search takes them to the Middle East, and a past about which their mother never spoke. The sister is the first to embrace the journey, but what she discovers is horrific.

Incendies could be translated as 'Scorched'. Indeed Denis Villeneuve has adapted Wajdi Mouawad's play of that name, but taken most of the film to the Middle East, and an unidentified country which could well be Lebanon, where the memories of that civil war still fester.

It's a tribute to the power of this adaptation, and the directorial choices made, that we never for a moment think this is an adapted stage play. Performances are powerful, especially from Lubna Azabel and Melissa Desormeaux-Poulin. But the plot twists will keep you hooked till the end.


Julie Rigg