LAST LETTERS FROM MY GRANDMA

Belgium, Romania, The Netherlands, Moldova | 2025 | 94 min | col. | Russian

For her debut feature-length documentary, Olga Lucovnicova – who won the best short prize at the 62nd Festival dei Popoli with her My Uncle Tudor – decided to describe the Russian diaspora with a bold, original approach: it is less about bodies than souls. Putting together personal stories and the epistolary correspondence from different generations, the director has painted a picture of a country – much like a Tolstoy novel – that is still impenetrable to non-Russian-speaking cultures. A common denominator links the Soviet Union and Putin’s Russia, i.e., the relentless flow of patriotic rhetoric and the manipulation/propaganda imposed on the population. Multiple testimonies evoke old and recent wounds, such as families split apart by war (like a Donbass fighter being called “ogre” by his Ukrainian nationalist sister). And yet this film, admirable for its form and content, closes with a sombre invitation to hope. In spite of everything. (E.S.)