“The Flowers Stand Silently, Witnessing,” by Greek-Palestinian director Theo Panagopoulos, won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival.
The Scottish-produced short documentary, which is also nominated for a BAFTA, features a second Greek credit, as the music was composed by Alexandra Katerinopoulou.
It has already been screened at the London Short Film Festival and the Edinburgh International Film Festival and has won an award at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam.
Sundance is the most popular independent film festival in the U.S., with over 400,000 people watching the films both online and in person in Salt Lake City in 2023. The Short Film Program awards were presented five days before the festival concluded, which featured 88 feature films and 57 short films selected from 11,153 submissions.
Sundance is the most popular independent film festival in the U.S., with over 400,000 people attending the screenings in 2023.
Theo Panagopoulos, speaking to fyi.news, thanked the crew, family, and friends and expressed “great gratitude” that the film was awarded at one of the most important festivals in the world. He described it as a “political film that faced many obstacles to reach its final form, as all Palestinian films unfortunately do.” He dedicated “the significant award to the Palestinian people in the West Bank and Gaza, who ask for the least from all of us: to turn our attention to the ongoing violation of human rights so close to Greek reality.”
Alexandra Katerinopoulou said the award “was the result of another wonderful collaboration with Theo and a new team of collaborators. ” She expressed her gratitude “that her music is reaching different parts of the world” and her incredible joy “that through the film, people will have the opportunity to see Palestine as it was about 75 years ago—part of it forever destroyed by years of war and brutal genocide.”
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