Director's Statement

My Nonna hates tomatoes.

This fact has always felt quietly ironic, given that she tended a garden well into her nineties, and the tomatoes were – as far as I’m concerned – its pride. They were rich, juicy and unforgettable — nothing like what you find in a grocery store. She did not grow them for herself. She planted them every year because it was what her parents had done, and because they were meant to be shared.

That act of tending — cultivating something not for personal enjoyment, but in service of others — became a central metaphor for this film. It reflects a form of care that is embodied, practical, and enduring. Many of us carry memories like this: a family recipe, a ritual, a gesture passed down through generations, holding meaning far beyond its surface.

Nonna’s Seeds is both an ode to that inheritance and a reflection on the process of becoming oneself. Identity often requires distance — the work of defining who we are outside of family, culture, or tradition. With time, a return can follow. Not as regression, but as reconciliation. Individuality and ancestry are not opposites; they coexist, shaping and grounding one another.

The film holds multiple emotional registers at once: joy and grief, beauty and longing, nostalgia and responsibility. As our grandparents and parents age and pass, a lasting ache remains, alongside a sense of duty — to remember, to carry forward what shaped us, and to offer that continuity to the next generation. This film reflects on that layered responsibility, and on what it means to tend the seeds we inherit.

Directed by Patricia Marcoccia