The Last Dog on Earth wins EWA Network Equality and Diversity Award
EWA Network president Graziella Bildesheim presented the award to The Last Dog on Earth, directed by Nina Kopko and produced by Leticia Friedrich.
"To a project led by women, a first time director with a strong vision, a story set in a future that resonbates with our recent past. This is a black and white picture witha touch of humour, leaving space for a hopeful future.
Leticia said: "Attending When East Meets West for the first time with The Last Dog on Earth was deeply meaningful for me. Bringing a project entirely created, led and driven by women into the Co-Production Forum, and seeing it embraced by the market with three awards, including recognition for gender equality and inclusion, confirmed the strength of our vision and the relevance of building international partnerships rooted in collaboration, care and shared values. We left Trieste stronger, with allies, producers and the certainty that our cinema grows when it crosses borders and joins forces."
LOGLINE:
In the near future, Luana, a forlorn rideshare driver, is just one fare away from affording her long-planned, blissful suicide. But her last passenger is hiding something in his suitcase: a dog named Laika. And in this world, dogs are supposedto be extinct.
DIRECTOR NINA KOPKO
Nina Kopko is a director, screenwriter, acting coach, and script consultant. She was born in 1986 in a small rural town in southern Brazil. She worked in various fields before earning a degree in Film from the Federal
University of Santa Catarina. In 2011, she moved to São Paulo, where she began her professional film career.
She was the assistant director on Invisible Life (dir. Karim Aïnouz, Grand Prix at Un Certain Regard, Cannes Film Festival 2019) and TheSilence of the Sky (dir. Marco Dutra, Special Jury Prize at the Gramado Film Festival 2016). She has written scripts for major Brazilian
networks and streamings such as Globo, Netflix, Paramount+.
She was the casting director for Motel Destino (Aïnouz, 2024) and conducted artistic research for I'm Still Here (dir. Walter Salles, 2024), which won the Academy Award for Best International Feature. Her directorial debut, the short Lunch Break (2021), won over 30 awards. Highlights include Best Short Film at the Havana, Brasília, Rio, Ceará, and Fribourg festivals, among others. The film also was a finalist for the Brazilian Academy Awards and was named Best Brazilian Short of 2021 by the Brazilian Film Critics Association.
In 2024, she wrote and directed two documentary series: The History of a Plant (GNT/Globoplay) and women for Independence (TV Brasil/History Channel).
Since 2018, she has been a tutor at the Cena 15 Screenwriting Lab in Fortaleza, Brazil. Among the many projects she has consulted on, highlights include White House (dir. Luciano Vidigal, 2025) and The Intrusion (dir. Flora Dias and Juruna Mallon, 2023).
Since 2016, she has studied acting techniques and directing actors, working as a casting and acting coach on various film and TV projects. She teaches workshops on directing actors and creating complex characters for screenwriting. In 2022, she took part in the screenwriting residency at Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, supported by Projeto Paradiso. She is a member of the Screenwriting Creative Hub at Vitrine Filmes and was selected for the Berlinale Talents 2025 program at the Berlin International Film Festival.
She is currently writing her first feature film, a science fiction story titled The Last Dog on Earth, produced by Vitrine and Boulevard Filmes. She is also preparing to direct her second short film, The Ant, produced by Sobretudo Produção and Boulevard Filmes.
D I R E C T O R ’ S S T A T E M E N T
During the pandemic, I left São Paulo and unexpectedly became caregiver to an elderly dog named Belinha. At first we were distant, more respect than affection, but sharing isolation changed us. I reorganized my life around her needs, learned to care for her aging body, and found a companionship that reshaped my sense of time and priorities. When she reached seventeen and developed an incurable cancer, I chose the gentlest death I could. Belinha taught me that dying well is part of living well.
This film grows from that bond and from what she revealed about presence, care, and meaning in difficult times. That experience became Luana’s emotional path and the seed of The Last Dog on Earth. Writing it has been a way to process disconnection and loss while searching for what can still make life matter.
The story explores bonds and a flicker of tenderness in a collapsing world. Setting it in the near future is not about futurism, but about how dystopia already shapes our present. We are virtually connected yet increasingly isolated. We live in an exhausted society where empathy erodes daily.
This project resists paralysis not through hope or heroism, but through presence and companionship between two beings. The film is realistic, a drama carried by humor that softens the weight of collapse.
I did what I know how to do: I made a story. Imagining the last dog on Earth might help us see the real with new eyes. And I believe in cinema. In a fractured, over-stimulated world, sitting together in the dark is still an act of connection. Like Luana and Laika in the final image, heading into the unknown. They will not change the world, but they are together, and that means everything.