Déni Oumar Pitsaev’s feature doc Imago was awarded May 21 the French Touch prize of the Critics Week jury.
In the film, when Déni inherits a small patch of land in the wild, beautiful valley of Pankissi, he sees a chance to finally build the house in the trees that he’s dreamed of since he was a boy. But nothing in the rugged Caucasus is ever simple. Returning to a village just across the Chechen border where he was born – a place he barely knows – Déni stirs up old feuds, buried family dramas, and above all, the question everyone keeps asking: when, and with whom, is he finally going to get married?
Director Pitsaev was eight years old when the First Chechen War began, he told BDE before the film’s world premiere.
“I remember everything. When you’re a kid and you see helicopters, guns and stuff like this, at first you don’t know what it is. It’s exciting actually because it’s the kind of thing you see in films. When I was growing up, it was just after the Soviet Union collapsed and we had all these films coming from the US, old action films and things like that. Then I saw it in real life and it was quite different. I realised it is not just a game or a film but it’s a real thing. It stays with you, actually, with your body. As a kid, you don’t realise what is happening. Your mind doesn’t understand why people kill each other…but your body reacts. And even when you grow up and you understand things with your brain, your body reacts in a different way. It has this memory…something very physical. Only people who’ve experienced it can understand it.”
In March 2025, producer Alexandra Mélot of Triptyque Films discussed the film’s structure with BDE. “The dramaturgy he constructs is made up of cinema direct sequences,” she said. “The film’s point of view creates empathy with the viewer, through the director/protagonist…The cinematographers had to document the physical journey of Déni as a character, while at the same time interpreting his own subjectivity as a director. The film is structured like a performance, over the course of a summer in which Déni reveals his dream house to his family members.”
This year’s Critics Week jury was presided over by Spanish director Rodrigo Sorogoyen, UK actor Daniel Kaluuya, Moroccan journalist Jihane Bougrine, French-Canadian cinematographer Josée Deshaies and Indonesian producer Yulia Evina Bhara.
