When a Scotland-based filmmaker of Palestinian descent unearths a rarely-seen Scottish film archive of Palestinian wildflowers, he feels a calling to engage with the footage. The archives present a world that his Palestinian grandparents knew very well – a world that is now actively being erased through current narratives, imagery and violence. His film reclaims the footage as a form of testimony in a heightened and uncertain time, and as a form of resistance to cultural erasure. The Flowers Stand Silently, Witnessing is a tender film essay that questions the role of image-making as a tool of both testimony and violence when connected to entanglements between people and the land.
UK 2024, '17
DIRECTOR: Theo Panagopoulos
MONTAGE: Theo Panagopoulos
MUSIC: Alexandra Katerinopoulou
PRODUCERS: Marissa Keating
FESTIVALS & AWARDS:
IDFA: Best Short (2024)
Sundance FF: Short Film Grand Jury Prize (2024)
London Short FF (2024)
Edinburgh IFF (2024)
Theo Panagopoulos
Theo Panagopoulos is a Greek-Lebanese-Palestinian filmmaker based in Scotland. His work explores themes of collective memory, displacement, fragmented identities and archives. He has directed multiple short films that screened in reputable festivals such as Sundance, Doc Lisboa, Thessaloniki among others and his most recent film called The Flowers Stand Silently, Witnessing won the best short film award at IDFA 2024. He is currently completing his PhD research on colonial film archives connected to 1930s Palestine.
