Through a delicate dialogue between archival footage and family memory, The Flowers Stand Silently, Witnessing explores the cultural heritage of Palestine and its gradual erasure. The filmmaker unearths rare color footage of Palestinian wildflowers – among the earliest visual records of the region – shot by Scottish missionaries in British-occupied Palestine. As violence and dominant narratives attempt to rewrite history, the film becomes a silent yet powerful testimony to a world struggling to survive in memory and images.

Theo Panagopoulos is a Greek-Lebanese-Palestinian filmmaker based in Scotland. His work explores themes of collective memory, displacement, fragmented identities and archives. The Flowers Stand Silently, Witnessing won the best short film award at IDFA 2024.