“Fear Can Also Be Powerful for Creation, Not Just for Destruction”: Déni Oumar Pitsaev on his Cannes Prize-Winner ‘Imago’

“Fear Can Also Be Powerful for Creation, Not Just for Destruction”: Déni Oumar Pitsaev on his Cannes Prize-Winner ‘Imago’

In Imago, the Chechnya-born filmmaker Déni Oumar Pitsaev journeys to a Chechen enclave in Georgia named Pankissi, where his mother has secured a plot of land for him to settle down. He spends time with his mother, with whom he’s close, and a hearty cousin and a friend, but he has barely seen his father since his parents divorced when he was nine months old. That’s on top of a childhood marked by his and his mother’s stays in Kazakhstan, Chechnya…