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Incendies [DVD] [French]

1 disc
Region 1 USA/CA (info)

Director Denis Villeneuve adapts Wajdi Mouawad's play concerning a pair of twins who make a life-altering discovery following the death of their mother. Upon learning that their absentee father is still very much alive and they also have a brother they have never met, the pair travels to the Middle East on a mission to uncover the truth about their mystery-shrouded past.
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Credits

Maxime Gaudette, Melissa Desormeaux-Poulin, Remy Girard, Lubna Azabal
Critic Reviews

4 stars out of 5 -- "[A] compelling mystery that blossoms into an emotionally intense story of survival and identity."
Box Office
"With a quiet restraint and an economy of movement in even the most brutal moments, Azabal makes the sometimes operatic extremes of Nawal's tribulations come to chilling life."
Los Angeles Times
3.5 stars out of 5 -- "[A] devastating mystery thriller from Quebec filmmaker Denis Villeneuve that grabs you hard and won't let go."
Rolling Stone
3.5 stars out of 4 -- "Villeneuve's writing and direction do an effective job of making clear events that might have become cloudy. The specific way, in cryptic dialogue, that he reveals his film's shocking secret is flawless."
Chicago Sun-Times
"[INCENDIES] has the structure, and some of the atmosphere, of an ancient folk tale....Though its details are fictional, this chronicle is impressively nuanced in its rendering of Lebanese politics and society in the 1970s and '80s."
New York Times
4 stars out of 4 -- "INCENDIES is a horror movie, a love story and a mystery, each thread of which is so expertly interwoven into the larger narrative that it is impossible to separate any one strand from the other."
Washington Post
"Villeneuve displays an impressive command of his material, patiently building up to an emotionally explosive climax."
Total Film
"[Azaba] lends a solemn and shell-shocked intensity to her role as Nawal..."
Sight and Sound