Incendies wins audience award in Rotterdam

Audiences at the Rotterdam Film Festival in the Netherlands have chosen Montreal director Denis Villeneuve's Incendies as their favourite film of the festival.

Incendies beat out nine other films for the honour Saturday, including Black Swan and Biutiful.

Biutiful is among Villeneuve's competitors for the best foreign language film Oscar, to be handed out Feb. 27.

Incendies follows French Canadian twins who travel to find their father and their brother after the death of their mother. The painful examination of Middle Eastern politics is based on a play by Canadian-Lebanese playwright Wajdi Mouawad.

Villeneuve was in Rotterdam last week at a screening of his film.

If the Seed Doesn't Die by Serbian filmmaker Sinisa Dragin won the Dioraphte Award in Rotterdam for best film support by the Hubert Bals Fund, which underwrites film projects by directors from the developing world.

Incendies is also in line for 10 Genie Awards, the Canadian film awards.

About 340,000 people attended the Rotterdam festival, which concluded this past weekend.