Incendies is a film of considerable scope and ambition, an epic that follows young French Canadian siblings on a search for their mother’s Middle Eastern roots. Written and directed by Denis Villeneuve, from a play by Wajdi Mouawad, it’s a feast of sweeping hillsides and vast villages, high-end melodramatic set pieces and restrained, quieter moments. Infused with mystery, tragedy and humor, serving as a genealogical study and Greek tragedy wrapped in one, it’s a fine achievement of bold, deeply felt cinema. The picture commands your attention from its opening frames, commencing with the slow-motion and ominously dreamlike image of an anonymous Middle Eastern boy’s head being shaved by a gun-toting elder. Radiohead’s “Like Spinning Plates” plays. From there, the picture gingerly segues into what’s, in simplest terms, a multigenerational detective story. After the death of Canadian immigrant Nawal Marwan (Lubna Azabal), her children (daughter Jeanne and son Simon) are shocked when the executor reveals letters, penned by their mother, which she wants delivered to their thought-to-be-dead father and a previously unknown brother.