When Agathe left for the United States, Vera was twelve years old. She had already stopped speaking, struck by sudden aphasia from which she never recovered.
Fifteen years later, the two sisters meet again one autumn in their childhood home, which has stood empty since their father's death. They have nine days to clear it out... before it is demolished and its stones used to rebuild the neighbouring dovecote, which was destroyed by fire a century earlier.
With great sensitivity and modesty, Le vieil incendie explores the unique and complex relationship between these two sisters – or at least what remains of it, after time, distance and silence have gradually frayed it. What to do with a land, a place overflowing with memories, childhood stories, all these objects that clutter as much as they connect? How to combine the voice of one with the silence of the other?
