Rwanda submitted "Ben'Imana" to the Academy Awards for the first time in its history, marking the debut Oscar entry from a country that had never before put forward a film for Best International Feature Film consideration. The submission follows Marie-Clémentine Dusabejambo's Camera d'Or win at Cannes, where "Ben'Imana" became the first Rwandan feature accepted into the festival's official selection.

The director spoke about the long road to the submission at Deadline's Contenders London event.

How did "Ben'Imana" enter the awards race?

The submission closes a 12-year arc for Dusabejambo, who conceived the project in 2013 after completing her second short film.

"I think it was my destiny, but it was a film that was still trying to find expression in me," she said. "I needed time to understand, to feel, to read, to hear… There's a point in time where in every generation needs to understand what happened, where we came from, what happened, and what people decided to do in their time within their own means to be able to continue."

Set in a Rwandan village in 2012, the film unfolds 18 years after the genocide against the Tutsi. Survivors and perpetrators live side by side, grappling with reconciliation under a national mandate that has shaped public life for nearly two decades.

What does the director want the film to do?

Dusabejambo, who was seven years old when the genocide occurred, built the script to break through the myths surrounding the period. "I wanted to be more authentic to the history," she said, "and I also wanted to not judge the people, the generation, that came before us, and what they did. I didn't really want to fall into the stereotype of the victim and the perpetrator."

She turned to cinema after studying mathematics and physics, a path that produced several shorts before "Ben'Imana" reached the screen. The director framed the project as a mirror held up to her community, one meant to clear space for a shared story rather than assign blame.

What was it like to make?

The shoot drew on a mostly non-professional cast and a Rwandan crew. "I love that the film looks like a million dollars," Dusabejambo said, "but [it didn't cost] a million dollars. The million dollars comes from the love and the art and the will of the people who worked with me to tell the story… There were many times when the fictional elements of the story were meeting the reality, because it's 100% made by Rwandans. All of us, we are connected to this story."

Production credits include:

• Cast drawn entirely from a mostly non-professional pool
• Crew made up entirely of Rwandans
• Project conceived in 2013, after her second short film

What does the path forward look like?

"Ben'Imana" enters the Best International Feature Film category as Rwanda's first-ever submission. With the Camera d'Or citation already in hand and the Oscar submission now official, the film carries two distinct awards-season credentials heading into the next stage of voting.

A panel video from the Contenders London event will publish on Monday.