Skip to main content
Flowers film image; blurred face

Flowers

Flores

MODES

North American Premiere

Recently winning the International Grand Jury Award at the Sheffield DocFest, director Jose Cardoso’s deeply personal and mesmerizing tapestry of internet and news footage is collected and absorbed, consciously and unconsciously, woven together–– indicative of the stuff that fuels our daily web feeds. He streams disparate details of a war in Ukraine “justified” by a string of seemingly unconnected events, as an ethnocide perpetrated by Brazil’s extreme right-wing unfolds in the Amazon. The duties of parenthood routinely interrupt the onslaught of tense imagery, granting gentle moments in the garden with his young son. All the while, the popular Buddhist monk Thích Nhất Hạnh offers ancient teachings to embrace one’s enemy as the object of our collective compassion.

 

Community Partner

Director
Featuring

Vladímir Putin, Thích Nhất Hạnh, Seydú Cardoso, María García Freire, Wynn Alan Bruce, Jair Bolsonaro

Credits
Country of Origin

Ecuador/South Africa

Year

2024

Language

In Spanish, English, Portuguese, Vietnamese and Tupí with English subtitles

Film Contact
Links
Content Warning

Graphic violence, self harm

18+
30 min
Documentary Experimental & Avant Garde Human Rights & Social Justice Shorts

Credits & Director

Producer

Adrian Van Wyk, María Fernanda García

Editor

José Cardoso

Original Music

Boris Vian

José Cardoso headshot; Flowers director

José Cardoso

His previous works such as Iwianch, The Devil Deer (2021) and What the Soil Remembers (2023) was awarded at Ann Arbor Film Festival, IFFR Rotterdam, Regina, CSFF and Ningbo China, among others and selected at Sitges, La Habana, Oberhausen, e-flux, Kurzfilm Hamburg, BlackStar Film Festival, ImagineNative, among others.

Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre

Tokyo Taxi

Dir. Yoji Yamada
91 min

An overworked taxi driver takes 85-year-old Madame Sumire on a final journey through Tokyo, revisiting the places that shaped her life. Yoji Yamada’s 91st film is a moving, heartwarming love letter to Tokyo, nominated for nine Japanese Academy Awards.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema

KAKU KAKU SHIKA JIKA fka Blank Canvas: My So-Called Artist's Journey

Dir. Kazuaki Seki
126 min

Adapted from acclaimed manga artist Akiko Higashimura’s autobiographical manga is a funny and sharply observed coming-of-age story about the creative awakening of a master of manga.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema

A Sad and Beautiful World

Dir. Cyril Aris
110 min

This Lebanese love story chronicles the romance between a level-headed businesswoman and a romantic restauranteur across several decades in wartorn Beirut. It's funny, charming, melancholy and you'll feel it all.

VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema

Blue Boy Trial

Dir. Kasho Iuzuka
106 min

Transgender filmmaker Kasho Iizuka revisits 1960s Japan and the sensational “Blue Boy Trial,” sparked by the arrest of a doctor performing sex reassignment surgeries. With trans actors in central roles, the film powerfully illuminates buried history, identity, dignity, and resilience.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema

Filipiñana

Dir. Rafael Manuel
100 min

A luxury golf course in the Philippines is the microcosm for Rafel Manuel's vastly assured feature debut, a striking composed comedy which mixes languid surrealism with pointed political satire.

VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema

Aruku - I Walk

Dir. Shiho Kataoka
105 min

This meditative documentary, captures the stories of four contemporary pilgrims on the Shikoku 88 Temple Pilgrimage as they follow in the footsteps of master Kūkai, the monk who shaped Japanese Buddhism. Each is burdened, in different ways, by exhaustion, solitude, or quiet disillusionment.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema