Deep and moving reflection on immigrant identity

The immigration experience is most often discussed and most easily understood as one of movement and relocation of an entire person. That is, it involves a journey from A to B, perhaps more letters, and processes of discovery and nostalgia, alienation and adaptation. But articulating the substantive nature of immigration is less straightforward. It feels like a ghostly self left behind, living a past life, and strangely encountering you when you return. A film full of subtle and tricky wonders, Geneviève Dulude-De CellesI’m slowly becoming fascinatedNina Rosa” It comes closer than many to conveying the strange and imprecise detachment of the soul through clearly expressed emotion and artfully constructed narrative structure.

One of the quiet surprises of the year Berlin Film Festival The Quebec filmmaker’s notable second feature in competition comes seven years after her debut. “A Colony” won a Crystal Bear in the Generation Kplus sidebar for youth at the same festival. The film, a simple yet sharp portrait of a shy teenager caught between opposing peer influences, was familiar in some ways but auspicious in the calm depth of its gaze. And that human composure was on display again in “Nina Rosa,” this time with more complex characters and more fine-tuned conflicts. The pensive sophistication and milky style that unpacks the film’s ideas may not satisfy the arthouse crowd looking for broader emotional gestures, but Dulude-De Celles may be a festival circuit major in the making.

It’s been nearly 30 years since Mihail (the excellent Galin Stoev) left Bulgaria following the death of his wife and started a new life in Montreal, taking his young daughter Roza with him. Over time, he established himself as a leading contemporary art consultant, often called upon by collectors and curators to research and validate new talent, but was somewhat taken aback when regular client Christophe (Christian Begin) asked for his expertise on Nina, an eight-year-old painter from rural Bulgaria (played by identical twins Sofia and Ekaterina Stanina), whose innocent but vibrant canvases, discovered by Italian talent scout Julia (Chiara), went viral. I got on it. Caselli). Agents and gallery owners are abuzz. Christophe wants Mihail to see if the hype is real.

Mikhail is reluctant to take on the job, not only because of claims that he is a child prodigy, but also because he fears returning to his home country, where he has not set foot since he first left. But he is spurred on to do so by Rosa (Michelle Tzontchev), a single mother who follows the now Anglicized Rose but increasingly distances herself (and by extension her young son) from her own cultural roots.

When he arrives in Bulgaria, there is a lot of ambiguity about his professional reasons for being there (the fascinating but illegible Nina claims she no longer wants to paint) and his unwanted reconnection with his home. On the one hand, he is obsessed with what is familiar and constant from the place’s past. On the other hand, he is treated like a visitor by locals who mock his accent and distrust his guarded presence. Only he can feel for himself the traces of national belonging.

A Bulgarian-Canadian theater director making his acting debut, Stoev is a compelling thinker on screen. His silence has a wounded gravitas that can tilt the direction of a sparsely written scene, and his striking face, told in lines, empty spaces and textures, rewards the camera’s constant scrutiny. But the movie makes dialogue matter when it wants to. The poignant reunion scene with Mikhail’s estranged sister Svetlana (a great character, as Svetlana Yantseva looks on) is driven by a vitriolic and frankly expressed anger at those left behind. “Who said you wanted to see it?” She spat, making it clear where her brother wasn’t actually home.

Nina, on the other hand, may or may not be a great artist, but she is cunning and clearly special, with a perspective rooted in humility and tough circumstances. (It’s even said that the paint she uses is unusually earthy and made from local natural pigments.) Roza is also exactly the age Mihail was when he kicked her out of Bulgaria, and the more time he spends with Nina, the more she becomes a proxy for a non-immigrant self similar to Roza’s. Especially as she faces a similar crossroads, Giulia and Nina’s opportunistic family is eager to move her to Italy to attend school. A prestigious art academy. Nina wants to remain faithful to her land.

It is doubly so that Dulude-De Celles never makes things literal or artificial, underlining his deft editing dexterity and the inspired casting of Nina’s twins, whose temperament and outlook change imperceptibly from scene to scene. Alexandre Nour Desjardins’ elegant, shimmering cinematography also capitalizes on the bronzed magical hourlight and cloaking qualities of the minty morning fog, a romantic beauty of images that encroaches on Mihail’s determination to see things as they are.