Imago Wins l’Œil d’Or at Cannes

Imago is the winner of the l’Œil d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. The film directed by Déni Oumar Pitsaev scored the documentary prize awarded by Le Scam, the French organization devoted to documentary film. The award carries a cash prize of €5,000. Imago, a French/Belgian co-production that screened in the Semaine de la Critique sidebar, sees the director return home after inheriting a piece of land. Life near the Chechen border seems very different in a climate of war and the return stirs up old memories.

“Imago gives voice to the unspeakable by powerfully and soberly evoking the scars left by war,” remarked the jury in a statement, translated by POV. “Through its roots in a sublime natural setting that is both refuge and memory, it questions solitude, exile, the unspoken, and the silent transmission of history. Without ever forcing reality, the film constructs a space for contemplation that opens a universal reflection on identity and resilience.”

The jury, composed of Julie Gayet, Carmen Castillo, Juliette Favreul-Renaud, Frédéric Maire, and Marc Zinga, gave a special mention to Eugene Jarecki’s The Six Billion Dollar Man. The documentary about WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange won the inaugural Globes-Artemis Rising Docu Award earlier this week in the Golden Globes’ new bid to highlight documentary at Cannes. Previous winners of the l’Œil d’Or include Ernest Cole: Lost and Found, All that Breathes, and A Night of Knowing Nothing.