The Flowers Stand Silently, Witnessing

Synopsis

When a filmmaker of Palestinian descent based in Scotland unearths a rarely-seen Scottish film archive of Palestinian wildflowers, he decides to reclaim the footage. This tender film essay questions the role of image-making as a tool of both testimony and violence when connected to entanglements between people and the land.

Directors' Biography

Theo Panagopoulos is a Greek-Lebanese-Palestinian filmmaker based in Scotland. His work explores memory, displacement, identity, and archives. His film The Flowers Stand Silently, Witnessing won Best Short at IDFA 2024. He is completing a PhD on 1930s colonial film archives in Palestine.