Despite the generally placid appearance of plants, many dynamic processes take place inside a plant cell. One such process that has garnered attention in recent years is termed 'autophagy'. While originally discovered in yeast, our understanding of autophagy in plants has improved significantly. Autophagy is considered a cellular recycling system in which cellular components or even entire organelles can be encapsulated by a membrane structure (autophagosome) and then transported to the vacuole (in plants) for degradation and re-use. One example of components degraded by autophagy are the mitochondria ('mitophagy'). Only a few years ago there was almost no information about plant mitophagy available, but lately several important studies have been published. A recent study identified an ATG8-FLZ-SnRK1 regulatory axis that connects carbon starvation signaling to mitophagy. In this Spotlight article, we focus on the function of mitochondrial FLZ proteins and SnRK1, and discuss them in context of current knowledge on the regulation of mitophagy in plants.