Secrets & Lies: Trailer for Denis Villeneuve’s Incendies

In a couple of hours from now, it’s expected that TIFF will read off Denis Villeneuve’s Incendies as one of the Canadian films selected for the fest. Not ready for Cannes, where he showed his films Next Floor (short) and Polytechnique in back to back years, Venice Film Festival’s Venice Days sidebar plays host to the film’s world premiere.

Not known for adapting other people’s material, in this case he’s adapting Canadian/Lebanese writer Wajdi Mouawad’s stage play and perhaps working on his largest budget to date, I’m a fan of Villeneuve’s previous work and particularly curious in seeing how he’ll handle the material, what tone he’ll employ to a narrative constructed with what appears to be linear parallel storylines. 

Lebel (Rémy Girard), a notary, reads for Jeanne (Mélissa Désormeaux-Poulin) and Simon Marwan (Maxim Gaudette), two twins, their mother’s (Lubna Azabal) will. Both twins are surprised to see two envelopes: one for a father they thought he was dead and one for a brother they’ve never heard of. For Jeanne, these two envelopes might help her to understand why her mom has adamantly kept her mouth shut ever since she was in hospital. This is why Jeanne decides to travel to the Middle East in order to know her family’s true past. Although he never loved his mom, Simon, because of his bond with his sister, decides to join Jeanne in her trip to the Middle East. Together, with the help of Lebel, the twins will discover that their mother wasn’t really what they made her out to be.