Incendies -2010-2010 |link| Jun 2026

Years later, now free, Nawal lives in Canada. She gives birth to twins, Jeanne and Simon. Her final act of vengeance is not violence—it is truth. In her will, she forces her children to find their father (Abou Tarek) and their brother (Nihad). She arranges for them to meet in the exact pool where Nihad used to wash his prisoners’ blood.

"Incendies" won several awards, including the Genie Award for Best Canadian First Feature Film and the Canadian Screen Award for Best Actress (Hiam Abbass). The film was also nominated for several other awards, including the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Incendies -2010-2010

Nawal, while in prison, gave birth to twins (Jeanne and Simon) after being raped by the same man. But unbeknownst to her, that man was also her own son, the child she had been searching for. The one she loved, the one she lost, and the one who destroyed her were all the same person. The film’s final, iconic freeze-frame—Nawal lying in a pool of water, staring at the sky—is the face of absolute, apophatic tragedy. Years later, now free, Nawal lives in Canada

The answer is no. Nawal’s entire life is an attempt to find her firstborn. In finding him, she loses her soul. Her twins, born of assault, are the only pure thing she has left—and she burdens them with the weight of her truth. The film argues that silence is a kind of death, but truth is a kind of bomb. It destroys everything. In her will, she forces her children to

The film opens in a nondescript notary’s office in Quebec. Nawal Marwan (Lubna Azabal), an immigrant mother, has died. But she has not left her adult twins, Jeanne and Simon (Mélissa Désormeaux-Poulin and Maxim Gaudette), a simple inheritance. Instead, she delivers a riddle.

“Truth is not always the same as justice.” Write a short response: What truth does Nawal bury? What justice—if any—is achieved in the final shot of the swimming pool?

Twins Jeanne and Simon Marwan receive legal documents after their mother's death instructing them to find their missing father and a brother they never knew. Jeanne travels to an unnamed war-torn Middle Eastern country to trace their mother's past, unraveling Nawal’s traumatic history of political violence, imprisonment, love, and sacrifice. The narrative alternates between Jeanne’s investigation in the present and flashbacks revealing Nawal's life, culminating in a devastating revelation about the family’s origins and the cyclical consequences of war and secrecy.