{"id":294936,"date":"2026-02-17T01:51:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-17T01:51:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/294936\/"},"modified":"2026-02-17T01:51:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-17T01:51:08","slug":"a-deeply-moving-reflection-on-immigrant-identity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/294936\/","title":{"rendered":"A Deeply Moving Reflection on Immigrant Identity"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tThe immigrant experience is most often discussed, and most easily understood, as one of an entire person\u2019s movement and relocation: a journey from A to B and perhaps further letters, with concomitant processes of discovery and nostalgia, alienation and adaptation. It\u2019s less simple, however, to articulate the disembodying nature of immigration: the sense of a phantom self left behind, living the life that might have been, and uncannily confronting you when you return. A film of many subtle, tricky marvels, Genevi\u00e8ve Dulude-De Celles<\/a>\u2018s slowly bewitching \u201cNina Roza<\/a>\u201d comes closer than many to conveying that strange, imprecise separation of the soul \u2014 through both lucidly expressed feeling, and artfully built narrative structure.<\/p>\n

\n\tOne of the quiet surprises of this year\u2019s Berlin Film Festival<\/a> competition, the Qu\u00e9b\u00e9cois filmmaker\u2019s notably assured second feature arrives seven years after her debut \u201cA Colony\u201d won the Crystal Bear in the same fest\u2019s youth-oriented Generation Kplus sidebar. That film, a simple but piercing portrait of a shy teen caught between opposing peer influences, was familiar in some ways but auspicious in the calm depth of its gaze \u2014 and that humane poise is present again in \u201cNina Roza,\u201d this time in service of more complex characters and more finely calibrated conflicts. The pensive sophistication and opalescent style with which the film unparcels its ideas might not please arthouse crowds wanting broader emotional gestures, but Dulude-De Celles may be a festival-circuit major in the making.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s nearly 30 years since Mihail (a marvelous Galin Stoev) left Bulgaria following the death of his wife, taking their young daughter Roza to begin a new life in Montreal. Over time, he has established himself as a leading contemporary art consultant, often called on by collectors and curators to research and validate new talents \u2014 though he\u2019s somewhat thrown when regular client Christophe (Christian B\u00e9gin) requests his expertise regarding Nina (played by identical twins Sofia and Ekaterina Stanina), an eight-year-old painter in rural Bulgaria whose na\u00efvely abstract but vibrantly composed canvases have gone viral after being discovered by Italian talent scout Giulia (Chiara Caselli). Agents and gallery owners are abuzz; Christophe wants Mihail to determine if the hype is real.<\/p>\n

\n\tWary not just of alleged child prodigies, but also of returning to a homeland he hasn\u2019t set foot in since his initial departure, Mihail is reluctant to take the job. He\u2019s spurred to do so, however, by Roza (Michelle Tzontchev), a single parent who now tellingly goes by the anglicized Rose, but is troubled by her growing distance (and more so, her young son\u2019s) from her cultural roots \u2014 and her fading memories of a mother who didn\u2019t travel and change with them. <\/p>\n

\n\tOn his arrival in Bulgaria, ambiguities abound, both regarding his professional reason for being there (as Nina, beguiling but hard to read, claims she no longer wishes to paint) and his unwanted reconnection with home. On the one hand, he\u2019s haunted by what\u2019s familiar and constant from his past there. On the other, he\u2019s treated as a visitor by the locals, who mock his accent and distrust his watchful presence; only he can sense in himself any trace of national belonging.<\/p>\n

\n\tA Bulgarian-Canadian theater director making his film acting debut, Stoev is a compelling thinker on screen: There\u2019s a wounded gravity to his silences that can tilt the direction of a sparsely written scene, while his remarkable face, storied in its lines and hollows and textures, rewards the camera\u2019s sustained scrutiny. But the film makes dialogue count when it wants to: An acrid reunion scene with Mihail\u2019s estranged sister Svetlana (a superb, seething Svetlana Yancheva) is propelled by the vituperative, frankly expressed resentment of those left behind. \u201cWho told you I wanted to see you?\u201d she spits, making clear where her brother truly isn\u2019t at home.<\/p>\n

\n\tNina, meanwhile, may or may not be a great artist, but she\u2019s wily and evidently special, with a perspective rooted in her humble, rugged surroundings. (We\u2019re even told the paints she uses, with their unusually earthy colors, are made from natural pigments of the region.) She\u2019s also the exact age Roza was when Mihail uprooted her from Bulgaria, and the longer he spends with Nina, the more she becomes a proxy for Roza\u2019s parallel, non-immigrant self \u2014 especially as she faces a similar crossroads, with Giulia and Nina\u2019s opportunistic family eager to move her to Italy, where she\u2019s to attend a prestigious art academy. Nina would rather remain loyal to her soil.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s a doubling that Dulude-De Celles never makes overly literal or contrived, but underlines with deft editorial sleight of hand, and the inspired twin casting of Nina, whose temperament and outlook do shift imperceptibly from scene to scene. Alexandre Nour Desjardins\u2019s elegant, glimmering cinematography also plays with the concealing properties of bronzed magic-hour light and minty morning mist, the romantic beauty of the images encroaching on Mihail\u2019s resolve to see things for what they are. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The immigrant experience is most often discussed, and most easily understood, as one of an entire person\u2019s movement…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":294937,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[26263,146,149509,85,46,397,149510],"class_list":{"0":"post-294936","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-berlin-film-festival","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-geneviu00e8ve-dulude-de-celles","11":"tag-il","12":"tag-israel","13":"tag-movies","14":"tag-nina-roza"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294936","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=294936"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294936\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/294937"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=294936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=294936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=294936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}