Incendies

Director Denis Villeneuve 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.[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.[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".[9] Villeneuve acknowledged unfamiliarity with Arab culture, but was drawn to Incendies as "a modern story with a sort of Greek tragedy element".[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.[9] He showed Mouawad some completed scenes to convince the initially reluctant playwright to grant permission for the film.[9] Villeneuve spent five years working on the screenplay, in between directing two films.[11] Mouawad later praised the film as "brilliantly elegant" and gave Villeneuve full credit.[12] The project had a budget of $6.5 million,[3] and received funding from Telefilm Canada.[13]

Moroccan-Belgian actress Lubna Azabal 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.[11] He considered casting the main character to be the most challenging, and at one point contemplated using two or three actresses to play the character, since the story spans four decades.[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).[11] Although she was 30, Villeneuve thought she appeared 18 and could play the part throughout the entire film, using makeup.[14]

Villeneuve selected Canadian actress Mélissa Désormeaux-Poulin to play Jeanne, saying the role required listening skills and Désormeaux-Poulin is "a very generous actress".[11] Before Incendies, Désormeaux-Poulin was mainly known for "light fare".[16] 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.[17] While shooting in Jordan, to research his role, actor Maxim Gaudette toured a Palestinian refugee camp near Amman.[18]

Some of the 15 days of filming in Jordan was done in Amman.

The film was shot in Montreal and Jordan.[17] The film took 40 days to shoot, of which 15 were spent in Jordan, with Villeneuve aiming to film no scene without being sure it would not be cut.[3]

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".[19] Some of the filming in Jordan took place in the capital of Amman.[1] To recreate Beirut, art director André-Line Beauparlant built up rock and debris on a street in Amman.[18]

Two tracks by British band Radiohead from their album Amnesiac, "You and Whose Army?" and "Like Spinning Plates", were used in the film.[20] The music was considered so notable and integral to the film that the music was mentioned in many reviews.[21][22][23][24] 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".[25] One music reviewer gave it first place in their "Top Ten Music Moments in Film".[26]

In Canada, the film passed the $1 million mark at the box office by October 2010.[29] By the end of April 2011, the film grossed $4.7 million.[30] In Quebec theatres alone, Incendies made $3 million.[3] It was considered a success in the country.[19]

According to Box Office Mojo, the film completed its theatrical run on September 29, 2011 after making $2,071,334 in the U.S.[31] 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.[4]

Incendies received highly positive reviews from critics. Review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes reports 91% positive reviews based on 125 reviews, with an average rating of 7.90/10. 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."[32] On Metacritic the film has a weighted average score of 80 out 100 based on 42 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[33]

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".[34] The Montreal Gazette's Brendan Kelly gave the film five stars and called it a "masterwork".[35] Marc Cassivi of La Presse claimed the film transcended the play.[36] 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".[37] 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".[38] 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.[39] 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".[40]

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".[41] He later selected the film as his favourite to win the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film,[42] 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".[43] 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".[44] Incendies was named by Stephen Holden of The New York Times as one of the 10 best films of 2011.[45] Betsy Sharkey of the Los Angeles Times called it Villeneuve’s "best-realized work yet".[46] A number of reviews complimented use of the song "You and Whose Army?" by Radiohead.[11][38][47][48] Criticisms have included charges of melodrama and orientalism.[49]

On 22 September 2010, Incendies was chosen to represent Canada at the 83rd Academy Awards in the category of Best Foreign Language Film.[50] 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.[51][52]

It won eight awards at the 31st Genie Awards, including Best Motion Picture, Best Actress for Azabal and Best Director for Villeneuve.[53] 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.[54] 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.[55]