Incendies (2010)

The Academy Award nominated Incendies is a handsome and poetic drama with haunting images and some pretty (dare I say?) incendiary scenes. Often brilliant, it is let down by a contrived plot and a twist that is powerful, but too convenient for its own sake. Still, you will leave the cinema with a feeling of having watched a film that is a spot-on representative of our current cultural and national conflicts.

Québécois twins Jeanne and Simon Marwan find out during the reading of their recently deceased mother's will that they have a brother and a father back in their mother's homeland, Lebanon. Simon (Maxime Gaudette) is reluctant to find their extended family, but Jeanne (Mélissa Désormeaux-Poulin) is more than eager to embark on a mission to unearth their mother's past. From this moment on the film oscillates between the Lebanese Civil War and the present time.