The festival presents two Canadian films this year, which are related firstly by the fact that their directors are women in the early stages of their careers with backgrounds that intersect with Eastern Central Europe. Secondly, both directors address the problems of families who emigrated from there to Canada. In Nina Roza, this manifests in the story of art curator Mihail, who relocated to Montreal from a transitional Bulgaria in the 1990s, but the ghosts of his past return to haunt him.
Geneviève Dulude-De Celles won Best Screenplay in the Berlin International Film Festival for this sophomore feature effort, but the intelligence and beauty of Nina Roza is equally dependent on her skillful direction. Mihail’s situation is provocatively juxtaposed with the plight of the eponymous, artistically gifted eight-year-old Bulgarian country girl.
Mihail travels to Sofia to investigate the talent of the enigmatic, who has garnered attention in the online art world. The sixty-year old Mihail has raised his daughter – now going through a marital crisis – as a single parent after his wife’s death and now has to, however reluctantly, reflect on his experiences between the mysteries of two worlds and two different daughters’ destinies.
Questions arise of migration, identity, language, alienation, artistry and morality.
GENEVIÈVE DULUDE-DE CELLES (b. 1986) had began her studies in film and photography before experiencing something that clearly affected her deeply: at the age of 21, she moved from Canada to Romania to teach photography at a French school in Bucharest. Being an outsider in a place that people were actively leaving and existing in that liminal space left their mark. Before Nina Roza, she distinguished herself with Sundance-winning short film The Cut (2014) and A Colony (2018), the winner of the Generation section of the Berlin International Film Festival.
Timo Malmi