A Sony Pictures Classics Release " INCENDIES " A film by Denis Villeneuve Based on the stage play by Wajdi Mouawad Starring Lubna Azabal, Mélissa Désormeaux-Poulin, Maxim Gaudette, Rémy Girard Produced by Luc Déry and Kim McCraw Canada’s official selection for the 83rd Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film Official Selection: 2010 Venice Film Festival | 2010 Telluride Film Festival 2010 Toronto International Film Festival | 2011 Sundance Film Festival www.incendiesmovie.com TRT: 130min | Release date (NY/LA): 04/01/2011 MPAA: Rated R | Languages: French, Arabic SYNOPSIS When notary Lebel (Rémy Girard) sits down with Jeanne and Simon Marwan (Mélissa Désormeaux Poulin, Maxim Gaudette) to read them their mother Nawal’s will (Lubna Azabal), the twins are stunned to receive a pair of envelopes – one for the father they thought was dead and another for a brother they didn’t know existed. In this enigmatic inheritance, Jeanne sees the key to Nawal’s retreat into unexplained silence during the final weeks of her life. She immediately decides to go to the Middle East to dig into a family history of which she knows next to nothing. Simon is unmoved by their mother’s posthumous mind games. However, the love he has for his sister is strong, and he soon joins her in combing their ancestral homeland in search of a Nawal who is very different from the mother they knew. With Lebel’s help, the twins piece together the story of the woman who brought them into the world, discovering a tragic fate as well as the courage of an exceptional woman. An adaptation of Wajdi Mouawad’s hit play, INCENDIES is a deeply moving story that brings the extremism and violence of today’s world to a starkly personal level, delivering a powerful and poetic testament to the uncanny power of the will to survive. ABOUT THE PLAY Directed by Wajdi Mouawad, Incendies premiered in France on March 14, 2003 at the Hexagone Scène Nationale in Meylan, and in Quebec on May 23, 2003 at Théâtre de Quat'sous as part of the 10th Festival de théâtre des Amériques. Part of the original cast included Andrée Lachapelle (Nawal), Isabelle Leblanc (Jeanne), Reda Guerenik (Simon), Richard Thériault (Hermile Lebel) and Éric Bernier (Nihad). Since its original production, the play has been staged in Canada (under the English title Scorched), France, Belgium, Switzerland, Finland, Holland, Japan, Mexico, Germany, Spain, the United States, Australia, Estonia, and Italy. The play received many awards including the SACD's "Prix de la Francophonie" in 2004 and the French "Syndicat de la critique" Prize for Best Play in 2004.
Incendies - film still - Lubna Azabal by micro-scope. WAJDI MOUAWAD (Author of the play Incendies; playwright, director, actor) The theatre’s most impressive new voice of the last decade, Wajdi Mouawad, is an equally accomplished playwright, director and actor. Born in Lebanon in 1968, Mouawad was forced by civil war to flee his homeland at the age of eight. His family’s exile began with a stay in France, where he lived until he permanently immigrated to Montreal in 1983. There he studied theatre and earned a diploma in acting from the National Theatre School. After graduating he acted in, wrote and directed a number of productions for the company he founded with Isabelle Leblanc, Théâtre Ô Parleur. In 1990 and 1991 alone he wrote three plays and it was during this time that his career as a theatre director truly began. His work as a director led him to explore an eclectic series of complex worlds. In 1997, he made a significant transition with his play Littoral (based on his original idea, written in collaboration with Isabelle Leblanc), an experience he repeated with Rêves, and later Incendies and Forêts. From 2000 to 2004, he was artistic director at Théâtre de Quat’Sous in Montreal. Then, in 2005, he founded a pair of creative sister companies on both side of the Atlantic: Montreal’s Abé carré cé carré (co-director Emmanuel Schwartz) and Paris-based Au carré de l’hypoténuse. In 2007 he took the reins as artistic director for the French theatre section at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa. He also works closely with Théâtre d’aujourd’hui in Montreal. In 2009, his association with the Avignon Festival signaled the arrival of an artist who for twenty years had been quietly creating a universally recognized body of work of dramatic power. That same year, already an Officer of the Order of Canada and a Chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, Mouawad was awarded the Grand Prix du théâtre by the Académie française, a tribute to his entire body of dramatic works. Incendies - film still - Rémy Girard, Mélissa Désormeaux-Poulin and Maxim Gaudette by Sabrik Hakeem.
INCENDIES (Spotlight): TRAILER (VO) - FILM CLIPS (VO): " The silence will be broken" - " You're definitely not from here" - " Where are the children?" - " Her mother is a disgrace" - " How can I help you?" -