Incendies



""Death is never the end of the story. It always leaves tracks.""

- Notary Jean Lebel

Incendies (meaning "Fires") is a 2010 Canadian mystery-drama film written and directed by Denis Villeneuve, adapted from Wajdi Mouawad's play of the same name. In 2011, it was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

After Nawal Marwan's death, fraternal twins Jeanne and Simon, her two children, at the demand of their mother's will, go to the Middle East to search for and give two letters to their brother and their father. During their quest, they find out about Nawal's past (revealed through flashbacks), in the middle of a civil war.


 * The Call Left a Message: The Tagline makes it very apparent: "The search began at the opening of their mother's will."
 * Catatonia: While at a public swimming pool, Nawal is rendered catatonic, Thousand-Yard Stare included. Jeanne cannot snap her off the state. The reason for that is not revealed until much later.
 * Fictional Country / Qurac: Nawal came from an unnamed Middle Eastern country.
 * Genius Bonus:
 * Jeanne, a mathematician, invokes the Syracuse problem (the conjecture being that no matter what value of n, the sequence will always reach 1) in one of her classes.
 * Later, in The Reveal, Simon alludes to the conjecture to Jeanne when revealing
 * Honor-Related Abuse: Nawal's parents (who are Christian Arab) planned to kill her, after they killed her Palestinian lover, but her grandmother spares her.
 * Posthumous Character: Nawal dies early in the story.
 * Professional Killer: At one point in Nawal's past, she joined Muslim fighters and shot a nationalist leader. She was imprisoned for 15 years in Kfar Ryat prison for this.
 * Shout-Out: Simon name-drops Nostalghia by Andrei Tarkovsky when he says
 * The Reveal: reveals to Simon that.
 * Tattooed Crook: Nihad was tattooed by his grandmother when he was a baby.
 * Torture Cellar: Kfar Ryat prison is a glorified version of this.
 * Torture Technician: became one inside Kfar Ryat prison.
 * The Trope Without a Title: During her imprisonment in Kfar Ryat prison, Nawal became known as "The Woman Who Sings" because she refused to submit to her captors and because she whistled to distract herself from terrible screams inside the prison.
 * Torture Technician: became one inside Kfar Ryat prison.
 * The Trope Without a Title: During her imprisonment in Kfar Ryat prison, Nawal became known as "The Woman Who Sings" because she refused to submit to her captors and because she whistled to distract herself from terrible screams inside the prison.