Geneviève Dulude-De Celles' Nina Roza Courtesy of Berlin Film Festival Share on Facebook Share on X Google Preferred Share to Flipboard Show additional share options Share on LinkedIn Share on Pinterest Share on Reddit Share on Tumblr Share on Whats App Send an Email Print the Article Post a Comment With the economics of U.S. moviemaking in flux, independent producers in Canada are tapping foreign partners via international treaty co-productions to scale financing and expand their reach worldwide. One example is Nina Roza, a transatlantic drama from Montreal-based director Geneviève Dulude-De Celles set to premiere in Berlin. "[It's] the story is of someone who is returning to Bulgaria, and most of his journey is in Bulgaria," Dulude-De Celles says of her lead character, Mihail, who fled the country 28 years earlier after the death of his wife and raised his daughter, Roza, on his own. Now an art expert in Montreal, Mihail reluctantly returns to Bulgaria to authenticate the work of Nina, an 8-year-old Bulgarian artist and possible child prodigy whose paintings have gone viral online, only to confront the ghosts of his past. Related Stories TV 'Tehran' TV Series Producer Dana Eden Found Dead at 52 in Hotel in Greece During Season 4 Shoot Movies "Infrastructure of Truth" Under Political Pressure and AI Disruption in Focus at Copenhagen Doc Fest's Industry Strand Out of necessity, the Nina Roza producers leveraged Canada's European relationships to structure a Canada-Belgium-Bulgaria-Italy co-production. Official co-production rules bar Canadian filmmakers from spending more than 25 percent of their overall budget abroad, meaning Nina Roza required foreign partners to unlock additional financing. Solving the financial puzzle - getting four co-production partners to agree on where funding, creative and technical contributions would come from and how they would be calculated - was no easy feat. "Now it looks great, but it was a long march in the desert to get four countries on board," Dulude-De Celles recalls. A similar challenge of stitching together a patchwork of financing faced Anne-Marie Gélinas, a producer on Jérémy Comte's Paradise, a Canada- and Ghana-set thriller also having its world premiere in Berlin. Comte's feature directorial debut follows Quebec teenager Antoine, who travels to Ghana for a showdown with Kojo, a local gang member, amid an escalating game of deception. Elevation Pictures, the original Canadian producer on Paradise, structured the project as a Canada-France co-production. That allowed Gélinas and her team, as majority partners, to share the cost of shooting most of the film in Ghana, with only about a third of the scenes shot in Canada. France, as the minority co-production partner, handled postproduction. "It's a story about two different countries and two men, so it was easier for us in terms of production to have two producers from two sides of the world basically coming together," says Comte. The Paradise production had Canadian and French heads of departments among the creatives, and a mainly Ghanaian crew for the majority Canadian co-production. "So the co-production opens up the doors. But more than that, it opens up a territory," Gélinas says, noting that Paradise was presold to Arte in France. Here, co-production serves as scaffolding, providing structure for international producers collaborating across multiple countries under official audiovisual treaties. The model requires a careful balancing act, as creatives and crews from different nations move through a project from production to postproduction. Gélinas, a veteran of the co-production model, recalled a "gray zone" on Paradise when the film financing had been confirmed and the production was assembling its cast and crews and finalizing contracts. "Everybody has good intentions, and nobody is trying to slow the process down. But it takes time," she recalls as crews in two different countries prepare for the cameras to roll. "You're trying to meet payroll, but at the same time you don't have the money because you're struggling to get the paperwork in order. It's this crazy time for producers, and then, magically, we always make it to the finish line, and with a lot more gray hair." But once the respective producers have negotiated who pays for what, a co-production allows a director to realize their vision, with the promise of creative freedom. "It was very exciting, because Jérémy's vision was clear. And everyone is at the service of that vision," Gélinas says. Vancouver-based director Nat Boltt also turned to an international co-production model - between Canada and New Zealand - for her directorial debut, Holy Days, as Hollywood studios increasingly prioritize action films and horror to drive theatrical box office. There were ultimately 21 different financiers for the long-gestating project, set in 1970s New Zealand and starring Judy Davis, Jacki Weaver and Miriam Margolyes as three offbeat nuns who help a young boy