NINA ROZA World Cinema

NINA ROZA

Screening to be followed by a conversation with director and screenwriter Geneviève Dulude-De Celles.

Set between Canada and Bulgaria, Quebecois writer-director Geneviève Dulude-de Celles’ (THE CUT, AFI FEST 2014) sophomore narrative feature is a poetic contemplation on fatherhood, heritage and art through the lens of post-Soviet diaspora. Having emigrated to Montreal in the ‘90s with his then eight-year-old daughter Roza, single parent and contemporary art curator Mihail (played by a solemn and melancholic Galin Stoev) is commissioned by a collector to confirm the authenticity of a Bulgarian art prodigy, Nina (jointly embodied by the ingenious twin casting of Sofia and Ekatarina Stanina). Returning to his native Bulgaria for the first time in three decades, the skeptical curator is slowly captivated by the inscrutable yet clever eight-year-old Nina, who seems inseparable from the rugged, rural land that raised her. Captured in all of its glimmering, golden-hour beauty under cinematographer Alexandre Nour Desjardins’ anamorphic lens, Mihail navigates this once familiar but now alien Bulgarian countryside, whose villagers regard his accented Bulgarian and foreign affect with equal caution and warm embrace, as phantoms of his exiled past and present converge. Drawing on her background in documentary filmmaking and close collaboration with Bulgarian producers Nikolay Mutavchisky and Lubomira Piperova on the script, Dulude-de Celles crafts a cross-generational immigrant story marked by its delicate dance between dualities. Through narrative parallels between the eponymous Nina and Roza, and mirroring reflections between Mihail’s decision to displace his family and his curatorial ethics of discovery in the face of global commodification, this Berlinale Silver Bear winner for Best Screenplay confirms Dulude-de Celles as a flourishing talent to watch. –Anna Li

Montreal-based filmmaker Geneviève Dulude-De Celles alternates between documentary and fiction filmmaking, while also working in production through Colonelle films, a production company she co-founded with Fanny Drew and Sarah Mannering. Her 2014 short film THE CUT won the International Fiction Short Film Jury Prize at Sundance Film Festival, and her debut narrative feature A COLONY (2018) received the Generation Kplus Crystal Bear for Best Film at Berlin Film Festival.

Jonathan Howell
Dekanalog
jonathan@dekanalog.com

MEMBERS & PASSHOLDERS

Screenings

October 25, 1:45 p.m.

Chinese 5

Details

Country: Canada, Italy, Bulgaria, Belgium

Year: 2026

Director: Geneviève Dulude-De Celles

Screenwriter: Geneviève Dulude-De Celles

Producers: Sarah Mannering, Fanny Drew

Director of Photography: Alexandre Nour Desjardins

Editor: Damien Keyeux

Production Designer: Laura Nhem

Costume Designer: Maya Gili

Music: Joseph Marchand

Cast/Featuring: Galin Stoev, Ekatarina Stanina, Sofia Stanina, Chiara Caselli, Christian Bégin

Running Time (minutes): 104

Languages: French, Bulgarian

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