Viorel MIRON and Claudia STRAVOSITU on the film project “The Sun of Moldova” at FERM 2025: “A film about Stephen the Great can serve as a binder of our shared heritage”
100 economic opportunities for the development of the Moldova Region on the A7 Highway route
REGIONAL ECONOMIC FORUM MOLDOVA 2025
19th Edition – Vatra Dornei, 9–13 July 2025
Thematic Panel:
Culture and Regional Identity – Tradition, Innovation, and Social Cohesion
Speaker:
Viorel Miron – DMO “Riviera Nistrului”
Claudia Stravositu – Producer of the feature film “The Sun of Moldova”
Topic of intervention:
“Stephen the Great – a bridge between historical and contemporary Moldova”
Present at the Regional Economic Forum Moldova 2025, held from 9 to 13 July in Vatra Dornei, Viorel Miron, representative of the Destination Management Organization “Riviera Nistrului”, and Claudia Stravositu, producer of the film “The Sun of Moldova”, drew the audience’s attention to a theme combining history, culture, and identity: the figure of Stephen the Great and how a major cinematographic project can bring this shared heritage back into collective consciousness.
Their intervention took place within Panel 10 – Culture and Regional Identity – Tradition, Innovation, and Social Cohesion, a section dedicated to exploring cultural values that unite communities beyond borders.
Viorel Miron: The History of Stephen the Great – Between Document and Legend
At the opening of the dialogue, Viorel Miron emphasized the difficulty of speaking about Stephen the Great without being emotionally moved. He noted that many aspects of the ruler’s life are known to the public only in fragments – through a few battles or legends – while other details remain little explored.
“We know some locations along the Dniester where battles took place, but it is often forgotten that there was a princely court in the area, a church from the Stephen-era, indirect clues that deserve to be investigated. We also have open questions, such as Stephen’s routes to Chilia or Cetatea Albă, and the strategic places where his army stopped.”
He suggested that these historical landmarks should be leveraged in the film to provide a more complete and authentic picture of the era.
Claudia Stravositu: “A film about Stephen can be a binder of shared heritage”
In response, producer Claudia Stravositu confirmed that the project “The Sun of Moldova” aims precisely at this goal: to show that historical and contemporary Moldova share a common cultural and identity heritage.
“A film about Stephen the Great can serve as a binder to show this shared heritage, whether we are talking about the Republic of Moldova, Northern Bukovina, territories now in Ukraine, or Romanian communities in those areas. We want to go to Chișinău, hold discussions, create a collection for children and youth, and present this first part of the story.”
An ambitious, yet financially challenging project
The project’s documentation is already completed, with the team having specialized historical consultants. The plan is to produce a first season covering the period up to 1462, when Stephen was 47 years old, followed by two more seasons portraying the rest of his life.
However, Stravositu highlighted the financial difficulties.
“Such a project is expensive and does not fit the type of content with easy audience reach. It is not a soap opera; it is history, a complex production. TV budgets and even online platform budgets are usually not calibrated for such initiatives. That is why we are trying to bring as many partners and supporters to the table as possible.”
Conclusion
The intervention of Viorel Miron and Claudia Stravositu at FERM 2025 demonstrated that history, when intelligently leveraged through modern artistic means, can become a powerful tool for unity and identity affirmation. The project “The Sun of Moldova” is not just a cinematic production about Stephen the Great but an initiative to recover collective memory and connect Romanian communities on both sides of the Prut River and in the diaspora.
Despite financial and logistical challenges, the team’s ambition shows that there is both will and vision to transform historical heritage into a cultural bridge between past and present, between generations, and across regions today separated by political borders.
