In the early 1990s, women left Moldova en masse to support their families. Unable to return home, they found a peculiar way to stay in touch: they sent boxes of gifts and food one could only dream of back then. In return, their children sent video tapes. In thousands of families, this exchange became a ritual. Through these private archives, Otilia Babara shows the frailty of family ties between mothers and daughters, forced to live apart to survive. At the same time, these intimate memories sketch a portrait of a post-Soviet country where women, at times unwittingly, came to lead the transition from communism to capitalism.

73 minutes
in Romanian with English subtitles
followed by a discussion with the director and artist Hoda Siahtiri (in English)

Otilia Babara is a documentary filmmaker from Moldova currently based in Brussels. Love is not an orange is her first feature documentary and it had its world premiere at DokLeipzig International Film Festival in 2022. Since then it got screened at Vision du Reel and MoMa DocFortnight. It received the Silver Eye Award for the best East and Central European documentary and the CEI Award at Trieste film Festival in Italy. Otilia holds a degree in documentary filmmaking from the Docnomads European Master program (Belgium, Hungary, Portugal) and is a 2013 Berlinale Talents fellow. She is drawn to those who usually go unnoticed. Her films expose big wounds hidden in small details and she's fascinated by untold stories of women.