‘Nina Roza’ Berlinale Review: Creativity Under Pressure

In A Poet, the Colombian director Simón Mesa Soto’s dramedy, a young girl’s gift for poetry becomes caught in a political and cultural tug-of-war, shaped by the adults’ opinions about what she should—or shouldn’t—do with her talent. The Bulgarian film Nina Roza explores a somewhat similar situation, though initially with a more serious, and arguably more sophisticated, tone. As in Un Poeta, the story’s focus is less on the “natural artist” herself than on the surrounding world: the adults and institutions that seek to control, manipulate, and ultimately turn her talent into a commodity within the contemporary art market.

Here, the story is told through Mihail (Galin Stoev), a Bulgarian-born art curator who has lived in Montreal for thirty years. Widowed, distant from his adult daughter Roza (Michelle Tzontchev), and grandfather to a young boy, Mihail has long rejected his homeland—and even mocks his daughter’s attempts to teach her child Bulgarian. But then the art world calls: an eight-year-old girl named Nina (played by twins Ekaterina and Sofia Stanina) in a remote Bulgarian village has been painting extraordinary works that have gone viral online. Soon, a collector commissions him for a task he would rather avoid: return to Bulgaria, meet the girl, and determine whether she really paints her own work—or if someone else is behind it.

Reluctantly, Mihail travels to Sofia, a city he has not returned to in decades. He struggles with the language, and at first his perspective is harsh and suspicious, convinced that there must be a catch and that the girl is not what she seems. When he arrives in her village—where locals greet him humorously as a foreigner (“Hey, Canada!”)—he is certain nothing good will come of it. Gradually, he gains access to Nina’s family, but the girl herself keeps her distance: sullen, uninterested in him and indifferent to her own burgeoning talent. All she wants is to be a normal child and play with her friends.

As the title suggests, Nina Roza connects the story of the young painter with Mihail’s own experiences with his daughter Roza—particularly his impulse to shape her into something she is not, or into what he wants her to be. The same dynamic applies to Nina: her mother encourages her, arranges connections with international dealers (the Italian actress Chiara Caselli appears in a brief but key role), sets up photoshoots—but Nina resists. At first, Mihail assumes the girl is not truly the author of the paintings, but he soon realizes that the truth is more complex: for her, the relationship between art and life flows from another place entirely.

Geneviève Dulude-de Celles’ film centers more on Mihail than the children, which, while not inherently problematic, limits its universality. It is the story of a man who, confronted with a rare artistic prodigy, begins to question not only his professional eye as a curator but also his choices in life and his approach to fatherhood. His journey forces him to revisit parts of his past, reconnect with family, and slowly open himself to the forces that once drove him away from his country.

Filmed with restraint, elegance, and—at least in the first half—considerable humor, Nina Roza is less about art itself, or the artists, or the art world, than about how art connects to its context: the place, the community, and the environment that shape it. While Nina’s work is neither strictly realistic nor a literal reflection of her surroundings, its creation is inseparable from being in that place, removed from commercial and even academic pressures. And although the film’s perspective may feel, in some ways, traditional, Dulude-de Celles is telling a story of multiple displacements: Mihail and Roza’s, and the one Nina must now navigate herself.