Sundance/Big Sky Documentary Shorts: Two early winners from SDI

With the Oscars now in the rearview, a new season of short films begins. Sundance and Big Sky Documentary Film Festival always offer a great early look at some of the first shorts that will qualify for next years Oscars. Two of these early documentary winners both come from the production company SDI (Scottish Documentary Institute).

After being nominated for a BAFTA, Theo Panagopoulos' The Flowers Stand Silentily, Witnessing took home the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance for Documentary Short, an award that qualifies it for the 98th Oscars.

The Big Sky Documentary Film Festival is always a festival we look at to get a first glance of what may in contention for the next Academy Awards. The festival qualifies two shorts each year and has a 6 year streak of at least one of its two winners going on to be shortlisted for the Oscars. Last year both of its winners (Until He's Back and Seat 31) ended up on the Oscar shortlist. This year Mariana Duarte's Headland deservingly took home the prize for Best Mini-Doc.

Check out our reviews for the two of these documentary shorts below:

Headland, dir. Mariana Duarte

Headland takes place in the nature reserve of Dungeness, Kent, a small fishing village situated on the United Kingdom side of the English Channel. It offers a sober and solemn look at the complexities of migration in modern society.

Interwoven throughout the film we see three distinct types of migration patterns. Perhaps the most obvious and studied today is the migration of refugees coming in boats over from France to the UK. The narrator tells the story of how the fishermen through generations have helped people finding themselves in dangerous situations on the channel, but also of how the aftermath has shifted from seeing them step ashore often to the people in charge nowadays “won’t solve the problem so they hide the problem” and how rapidly the general mindset has changed.

We also witness the story of how the fishermen in just a couple generations have migrated their fishing patterns, and eventually even migrated away from fishermen as an occupation. As the small village becomes more gentrified and popular for tourism the fishermen have dwindled in numbers and the knowledge and skill coupled with the occupation has gone with them.

Lastly and perhaps most importantly we see the effects of climate change on a very focused and small scale. Of how the underlying rocks have eroded and created the shingle beach we see in Dungeness now, changing the shoreline and creating a massive cliff at its edge.

I found it very moving how one of the narrators offers their very open and honest thoughts about these very complex topics, how they themselves have seen the rapid changes take place during their lifetime, without it feeling overtly political or aggravated. Even when commenting on the hugely political issue of refugees it feels rooted in the most humane take, not derived from fear or paranoia. The climate will keep changing, whether it is physically or mentally, and we cannot really stop that, all we can do is adapt and change with it.

I also want to call out the sound mixing throughout the film. Coupled with the constant narration we hear familiar sounds of the beach - seagulls squawking, wind whistling, waves crashing, pebble rocks clicking against each other  - emphasising the imagery and the stories, creating a foundational atmosphere. There is also a looming soundtrack behind it which gradually builds then suddenly drops, mimicking the beach cliff and timed perfectly with the crescendo of the story.

Ultimately, Headland is a conversation starter without offering much in terms of strong opinions in and of itself. It is a story to sit with and engage, to discuss with the people close to you and to hopefully walk away from a bit more open and accepting.

Review by: Robin Hellgren

The Flowers Stand Silently, WItnessing, dir. Theo Panagopoulos

Green grass fields with purplish flowers contrast with cloudless skies. A woman walks among the grass and flowers, shaking as the wind makes them dance. The first seconds of The Flowers Stand Silently, Witnessing offers us a hostless glimpse at the wild. An unknown place that we connect with through its imagery. At the one-minute mark, the director, Theo Panagopoulos, explains his artistic approach to it and through a card, he offers some context. The film is a reclaim of the footage of the Palestinian flowers shot by a Scottish missionary during the 1930s and 1940s. Theo and his team digitized those images and presented us with unseen material and the director’s poetic interventions through cards on the screen. Panagopoulos, a Greek-Lebanese-Palestinian artist based in Scotland, takes the observations from the missionary and gives it a new life. The missionary captures Wild Flowers of Palestine and Floral Beauty of the Holy Land, focusing on the natural beauty of the sacred place. It is the motherland of Jesus Christ, and nature mirrors his perfection. 

As he works with the 16mm material, the director amplifies the meaning of those flowers. The film becomes a study of the Palestinian journey and its battle to remain on its roots. A context to his upcoming approach is when Theo started working on it on October 4th, 2023, three days before a new conflict arose in the region. The blossoms suddenly become a metaphor for the Palestinian people, who would be born there and battle the outside dangers to stay in their designated place by nature. Theo observes the almost a hundred-year-old footage as a time portal of a bygone era. A land that suffered from exodus, bombing, and settlers. A crucial analysis is how the missionary would not focus on the locals: there is only a combined two minutes and a half of footage from the people. It mirrors the current political procedure, which dehumanizes the individuals and seeks the absorption of the land.  

In another current understanding, Panagopoulos restores recordings that few or even no one has ever seen. He gives it a new treatment to live, and it now presents us with a new glimpse of the past territory. The restoration amplifies the multiple colors on the screen (yellow, green, and purple) and blends it with the texture of the 16mm reel to remind us that it is the past eternalized in film. Cinema as a language also has this power. It frames a specific reality that those grand green fields may not exist anymore, and are underneath destruction and pain. As the director states in the final statement, the film is dedicated to all flowers, plants, animals, and humans lost in the genocide. As those recordings represent a past moment that transports us, Theo reflects on the materiality of film. How it can serve as a time machine and travel back to a reality that no longer exists.  

Aside from being a formal exercise of the footage, The Flowers Stand Silently, Witnessing invites us to reflect on how the colonial filming of Palestine could allow us to understand the past. Through its blinding colors and texture, it expands what is on the screen to observe what is happening now and shows how the onscreen and offscreen realities merge after all.

Review by: Pedro Lima