The story starts in Canada, probably Quebec, in this French language film which Villeneuve scripted from an award winning play authored by Waidi Mouawad. Both his script and the movie itself were nominated for 2010 Oscars including an Oscar for the Best Foreign Language film. It is an honor well deserved for a movie I might not have seen had I known more about it, for movies with these themes and violent scenes make me very uncomfortable. However, I am glad that I did see it, for this is one of those few movies where its power remains with you long after you have left the theater. 

The performances by the two women in this film, Lubna Azabal as Nawal Marwan and Melissa Désormeaux-Poulin as her daughter, Jeanne Marwan, are absolutely riveting in scenes overshadowed by the bleakness of gray wintry skies in Canada contrasted with sunnier skies in Lebanon but landscapes and cityscapes even more bleak not because of the arid climate but because of the arid hearts living there.  

The short opening scene is a mystery. A little boy is having his head shaved while armed guards stand nearby. There is no sense of time or of place or of a reason for this scene, but the look of resentment and even hatred in the little boy's eyes is frightening. 

The movie shifts to Canada, where Jean Lebel (Rémy Girard), a notary public, is reading the last will and testament of Nawal Marwan (Lubna Azabal), a naturalized Canadian citizen originally from the Mideast. It turns out that Nawal Marwan had worked for him for 15 years as his trusted secretary and friend, and he has long been close to her family. Her two adult twin children, a daughter, Jeanne (Melissa Désormeaux-Poulin), and a son, Simon (Maxim Gaudette), sit across the desk in stunned silence as Lebel reads the will. 

While Nawal's estate is to be divided evenly, it is her final three requests which are so cryptic and shocking. First, she commands her children to bury her face down without a gravestone if her wishes are not carried out, for she is deeply ashamed that she has made promises which she has not kept. Then Lebel gives Jeanne a sealed letter which she is told to deliver to a father neither of them knew was alive followed by a second sealed letter which he gives to Simon with the instructions that he is to deliver it to a brother that neither of them knew they had. It is only after these letters have been delivered that their mother is to be properly reburied with a gravestone.

Hearing this news floors both Jeanne and Simon, since they have long been told that their father had died in the Lebanon wars and that they have no other siblings. They look at each other, and Simon asks Lebel if there is some mistake. No, Lebel assures them, there isn't. He knows that Nawal was of sound mind when she had him craft her will some time before. (Not to give away the plot, but please keep this point in mind when seeing the movie.) He had tried to get her to change it, but she was adamant that her instructions be carried out. Simon's first instinct is to dismiss all this as craziness, but Jeanne overcomes his objections and tells him that she will pursue the matter even if he doesn't since it was their mother's final wishes. 

Deciding that finding their father will be the easiest task, Jeanne takes off for the Mideast and what they had been told was her mother's home town. Lebel does her a great favor by lining her up with a fellow notary in the area, who does the preliminary research on the Marwan family history and records. 

Jeanne begins to find out out that their mother was not at all the woman she had seemed to be. The single old picture that she had found in her mother's effects shows Nawal standing in front of a building with Arab lettering which the notary translates as being the name of a former prison. Then her cousins abruptly kick her out of their home without explanation when they find out who she is. They won't have anything to do with the daughter of Nawal Marwan because her mother had disgraced the family. Jeanne begs Simon and Lebel to come over and help her find the answers. 130 minutes and rated R for some strong violence and language.