as answered in the guestion comments. The problem was that when using Jetpack integrations as explained here for the ViewModels https://developer.android.com/training/dependency-injection/hilt-jetpack and you have to add those dependencies also in the main app module (not only in the modules where you actually use ViewModels).
for example , if you have the following in the feature module's build.gradle file:
implementation "com.google.dagger:hilt-android:$hilt_version"
kapt "com.google.dagger:hilt-android-compiler:$hilt_version"
implementation "androidx.hilt:hilt-lifecycle-viewmodel:$hilt_lifecycle"
kapt "androidx.hilt:hilt-compiler:1.0.0-alpha02"
make sure you add them to the app's build.gradle file as well