My Memory Is Full of Ghosts review – deeply moving visual hymn for the bombed-out Syrian city of Homs

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Anas Zawahri’s documentary lays heart-wrenching testimony over languorous shots of bullet-ridden ruins and deserted streets The western Syrian city of Homs is only a husk of its former self. Previously a major industrial centre, the region became a key battleground between 2011 and 2014, for Bashar al-Assad’s army and rebel forces. Amid the immense bloodshed, hundreds of thousands of civilians were either displaced or trapped inside their own homes. Filmed in the summer of 2023, this deeply moving documentary from Palestinian-born and Syria-based film-maker Anas Zawahri maps out the collective trauma and sorrow that continue to linger, even after the shooting has stopped. Unfolding in languorous, largely static shots of bombed rubble, hollowed-out buildings, and deserted streets, the film lays bare the startling extent of wartime brutality. A sense of stillness and stagnancy hangs in the air, and almost every wall is riddled with bullet holes, urban scars that mirror the psychological ...
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‘They just make you happy’: the Queensland farmers who took a chance on a million sunflowers

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Battling drought, Jenny and Russell Jenner tore out their failing crops. Could fields of sunflowers for selfies save their Queensland farm?

There is the smell of freshly cut hay as you travel the country road towards the yellow that dusts the landscape in the distance. Row upon row of sunflowers run away down the hills. Little bursts of sunshine sway on the top of tall stems. With their bright optimistic faces – their sheer yellowness – they reach towards the sun, bringing the positive.

But in 2021 there was no yellow in this landscape. Everything was brown, dead, desiccated in the heat haze. After seven years of drought the Moogerah Dam in south-east Queensland’s scenic rim was nearly empty. “There was no water left,” says Jenny Jenner, “and they were cutting off our allocation. And you can’t grow anything without water.” The quaint country towns in the area were depressed; no one was buying seed, fertiliser, fuel or food. “It wears people down,” the farmer adds. “You forget what years and years of drought do to people and the stress that it puts them under. I was trying to think, how could we diversify the farm? I was trying to think out of the box.

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