Based on the play of the same name by Canadian author Waji Mouawad, the film is partly based on the life of Soha Bechara, and is set during the Lebanese Civil War of 1975-1990.
The film tells the story of twin Canadian siblings who follow their mother’s will and travel to Lebanon in search of their father and brother, whom they have never met. The story is interspersed with memories of their young mother, who in 1970 broke the rules of her Christian family by falling in love with and becoming pregnant by her Muslim boyfriend, resulting in the boyfriend’s execution, and the child’s being sent to an orphanage, where she is named Nihad, and who, after attending university, joined the Lebanese Resistance, and in the midst of the civil war Assassinated Antoine Lahad, leader of the South Lebanon Army, and was imprisoned for fifteen years, where she was raped multiple times by a hitman named Abutare and made pregnant, giving birth to twin siblings, who eventually found out that after the orphanage burned down, Nihad changed her name to Abutare after joining a Christian militia, and that the twins’ older brother was the same person as their biological father, the mother’s child of many years, and her rapist, all the same man, the twin siblings fall into a breakdown when they discover the truth.
2010 / Canada France / Drama Suspense War / Denis Villeneuve / Lubana Azbarr Melissa Desormonts-Bollin
Twin siblings Jeanne (Mélissa Désormeaux-Poulin) and Simon (Maxim Gaudette) receive the will of their deceased mother, Nawal (Lubna Azabal), but after it is read out, the two siblings find it hard to accept the fact that the will is written to a woman who never died. When the will is read out, the two siblings have a hard time accepting it: one is addressed to their father, whom they have never met, and the other to her third child – a brother they didn’t even know existed.
The movie skillfully moves between two different time periods: the mother’s lifelong search for her firstborn son; and the siblings’ journey to the Middle East in search of their father and brother, following their mother’s will.
But the more they search, the more they are confronted with a mystery and a shocking truth.
The film is adapted from the play of the same name by the famous Canadian French writer Wakidi Mouawad.
Director Denis Villeneuve was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the 83rd Academy Awards.
