The international jury, composed of three experts from Serbia, Germany and Romania, awarded the Green Vine prize in the national documentary competition of Moldox Festival 2025 to Last Letters from My Grandma, directed by Olga Lucovnicova. The film Consider a Tomato, directed by Marina Sulima, received a Special Mention.
On 30 November, during the closing ceremony of the 10th edition of Moldox Festival, the jury — independent experts Mara Prohaska Marković, Nadja Tennstedt, and Victor Morozov — announced the results of the Green Vine competition, explaining their decision as follows:
The jury wishes to award a special mention to a film that recounts the Moldovan present-day immigration process through a charmingly subjective lens. Driven by a melancholic sense of loss, as well as by a curiosity for generational transformations, this film paints a daring portrait of womanhood and actively questions notions of displacement, East-West divides, and home. Picking an everyday element as a metaphorical link between intimate family traditions and universal struggles, this is a multi-layered work that achieves emotional relevance. We would like to congratulate the film “Consider a Tomato”, directed by Marina Sulima.
The main prize of the Green Vine competition goes to a film that daringly confronts a painful family heritage while placing it against the tormented history of the Soviet Union and the no less conflictual realities of present-day Russia. This quest for understanding and belonging achieves a massive emotional scope by intertwining the personal histories of those crushed by merciless times and the grand narratives of the nation. This dramatic family portrait builds into a daring — yet subtle — gaze that, far from any abstraction, ponders the actual human cost of experiencing traumatic events firsthand. The winner of the Green Vine competition is “Last Letters from My Grandma”, directed by Olga Lucovnicova, congratulations!
Congratulations to the team of the film “Last Letters from My Grandma”, director> Olga Lucovnicova, producers: Ada Solomon, Denis Vaslin, Frederik Nicolai, Virgiliu Mărgineanu.
In total, six films were selected for the competition, with the 2025 edition of Moldox Festival marking the premiere launch of the Green Vine national documentary competition. Launched on 4 August 2025, the competition was open to premieres of Moldovan medium- and feature-length co-productions. The selected documentaries were: Consider a Tomato (Marina Sulima, Netherlands, 2025), Electing Ms Santa (Raisa Răzmeriță, Republic of Moldova/Romania, 2025), Green Light (Pavel Cuzuioc, Austria/Romania, 2025), Last Letters from My Grandma (Olga Lucovnicova, Netherlands/Republic of Moldova/Belgium/Romania, 2025), Sailing with Babushkas (Călin Laur, Republic of Moldova/USA, 2025), Ultimate Weapon (Dragoș Turea, Republic of Moldova/Romania, 2024).
The Green Vine Prize, worth €1,000, is offered by one of the festival’s strategic partners — the Innovate Moldova Project, funded by Sweden and The United Kingdom. Symbolizing energy, growth, and vitality, the essence of the Green Vine Prize is to encourage new directions and the development of new projects in Moldovan documentary cinema.