A haunting, poetic act of remembrance that blends ritual, testimony and humanity to confront how easily history repeats
A deeply affecting, poetic and political act of remembrance, The Flowers of Srebrenica gathers fragments of grief, ritual, and witness into something quietly transcendent. Created by LegalAliens Theatre and Sarajevo War Theatre SARTR to mark the thirtieth anniversary of the Bosnian genocide, it draws on documentary material, physical theatre, and abstract imagery to confront cycles of violence that are tragically unbroken. Inspired by Aidan Hehir’s illustrated novel of the same name, the piece follows an Irish academic in Balkan history, travelling to Srebrenica in Bosnia for the first time, led by local tour guide Mustafa to this site of the 1995 genocide, where 8,000 Bosnia Muslims were killed, and more than 20,000 people displaced.
From the opening moments, there’s a sense of entering ceremony rather than performance. Three choral figures move in slow unison beneath soft light, their stillness holding us in quiet attention. It feels sacred – not in a religious sense, but in the weight of what is being remembered. When they begin to touch heaped mulch on the stage, smearing and shifting this ground between them, the atmosphere deepens from reverence to mourning. The earth becomes both witness and excavation site: something to be honoured, but also something that holds the lost dead.
Objects gather meaning over time. The simple act of digging out sandals from the ground and later seeing them worn by the guide lands with an ache. What at first seemed symbolic becomes human – an image of continuation, atrocity folded into the everyday, memories of his own experience of the war surfacing and cluttering the silence between these men; never said. It’s a moment that, like much of Lara Parmiani’s direction, rewards reflection – the work lingers, its subtleties unfolding.
The shifts between abstraction, commemoration and narrative are deliberately jarring. One moment, ethereal ritual, the next, a car journey through remembered landscapes, as Aidan (Cillian O’Donnchadha) travels with Mustafa (Edin Suljić). At first, the change feels abrupt, the rhythm disrupted. Yet gradually that dissonance becomes part of the point. In one breath, we are immersed in collective grief; in the next, thrown into banal conversation about home, how both their wives are teachers, and about nationality – the distance of someone else’s war. The Irishman who “wasn’t really affected” embodies that disconnection.
The chorus of three women – survivors and remembers Selma Alispahić, Taz Munyaneza, and Valeriia Poholsha – ground the piece in a global pattern. Their bodies and voices intertwine, carrying the ghosts of Bosnia, Rwanda, and Ukraine. What could feel didactic instead lands with subtle force. Their movement vocabulary is simple but resonant, suggesting both exhaustion and perseverance. When their identities are finally named, the effect is quiet devastation – a recognition that the story of Srebrenica is not singular but shared, held alongside the refrain and certainty of “never again”.
Projected names and dates, each ending in 1995, confront us with unbearable specificity. These are not statistics but people, their presence and reality conjured. In a gesture toward the end, the women pass soil to the audience, both intimate and a charge: a reminder that remembrance is not passive, and that bearing witness carries responsibility.
At times, the pacing drifts. The stillness of certain sections risks losing momentum, yet that slowing down also feels deliberate – an elegance and simplicity of story that carries a horrific weight, and a refusal to rush through memory. The piece demands patience, asking us to sit in silence and understanding, to resist the urge for narrative closure, while still holding its audience with care and tenderness.
The Flowers of Srebrenica quivers with the political importance of remembrance, viscerally speaking to atrocities in this present moment. Quietly, insistently, beautifully, it reminds us of what must never be buried or repeated.
Written by Ariella Stoian