Of Petals and Ashes

in development / 30 mins / hybrid documentary

A wild flower on a window frame in Amsterdam opens the film onto a wider landscape of trees, images, and buried histories. Moving between the Netherlands, Japan, and Indonesia, Of Petals and Ashes follows the lives of trees through botanical gardens, archival photographs, colonial routes, and postwar ruins. As plant matter turns into image, through photography, celluloid, and memory, the film traces a quiet history of extraction and survival. Burnt camphor trees in Japan, kapok fiber in colonial Indonesia, and fragments of personal recollection gather into a meditation on what remains after violence, and how images continue to carry what they cannot restore. Blending observation, archival traces, and reflection, the film lingers on history not as a closed narrative, but as residue: rooted in matter, delayed in light, and never fully our own.