 The story is based on events that happened during the Lebanese Civil War of 1975 to 1990, but the filmmakers attempted to make the location of the plot ambiguous.Director Denis Villeneuve first saw Wajdi Mouawad's play "Incendies" at Théâtre de Quat'Sous in Montreal in 2004, commenting "I had this strong intuition that I was in front of a masterpiece".Villeneuve acknowledged unfamiliarity with Arab culture, but was drawn to "Incendies" as "a modern story with a sort of Greek tragedy element".