Déni Oumar Pitsaev

I received a land in Pankissi, Georgia, a valley at the foot of the Caucasus, right by the Chechnyan border, where I was born. In exile, I am thinking of building a house in this remote place, inhabited by descendants of my Chechen clan. But how could I possibly live in such a place?

Fedor is a young locksmith in Murmansk, a frozen city in the obscurity of the Russian Arctic. Client after client, he roams through the alleys of concrete animated by a fantasy that isolates him from the city and its population. His dreams corrode his relation to reality and open the door to a phantasmagoric universe; a second sun is rising above the Russian Arctic.

Déni is trying to find himself. His soul-searching takes him on the traces of his childhood, in the snowy landscapes of Kazakhstan. In an apartment decorated with thick drapes, he encounters his Chechen family and his patriarchal culture. At the mosque, or in the boxing gym, he discovers the closeness of the men of his “clan”. They are all virile and settled in their lives. He is struggling to find his place.