Incendies

Editor’s note: We no longer have rights for this episode. 

Adapted from Wajdi Mouawad’s play, Canadian filmmaker Denis Villeneuve’s Incendies is a gut-punch of a drama about a pair of siblings on a journey to an unnamed, sectarian-violence-ridden Middle Eastern country to fulfil their late mother’s final request and unravel her past.

Incendies won eight Canadian Genie awards in addition to being nominated for an Academy Award. 

Denis Villeneuve joins Amanda Palmer, Al Jazeera’s head of entertainment, and the FPS audience to discuss this devastating drama.

Where Do We Go Now?

Lebanese actor turned director Nadine Labaki made an immediate splash a few years back with her debut dramatic comedy feature, Caramel. 

She premiered her follow-up, another dramatic comedy, Where Do We Go Now? at the recent Cannes Film Festival. 

The film is set in a fictional Lebanese village where Muslims and Christians peacefully coexist.

When tensions between these groups arise elsewhere, the women of the village are determined to keep this from affecting their men-folk, and so they concoct a series of deceptions to keep the men at peace. 

Labaki speaks to FPS about the personal inspiration behind this story. 

The Forgiveness of Blood

The Albanian Alps region, in the country’s north, is one of the more remote corners of Europe. And since the fall of Communism in the early 1990s, the ancient, traditional law known as the Kanun has reasserted itself here. As a result, the blood feud – in which families may assert rights of lethal revenge against other families – has once again taken hold.

The Forgiveness of Blood contrasts the technologically enhanced lives of modern Albanian teens with this ancient and deadly practice. Teenaged Nik dreams of opening an internet cafe.

But when his father kills a neighbour and goes into hiding, Nik is targeted for revenge and is confined to home – potentially for years.   

Filmmaker Joshua Marston, whose 2004 film Maria Full of Grace won many admirers, immersed himself for two years in this unique milieu, and talks to FPS about the challenges (and advantages) of inserting oneself into a completely alien culture.

The Future

After her super-quirky 2005 indie hit Me and You and Everyone We Know, actor-director and all-round creative maestro Miranda July returns to filmmaking with The Future.

It is about a thirty-something couple trying give their lives more meaning by adopting a dying cat that will need round the clock care. 

Determined to realise their dreams in their last days of freedom, they quit their jobs and set out to try and find their true paths.

Miranda and her lead actor, Hamish Linklater, speak to FPS about how finding one’s true path is not nearly as easy as it can seem in other movies.