Lying upon a Rock is a documentary born as an undergraduate thesis by Spyros Kavvadias, produced in 2020 2021 under the supervision of Maria Chalkou with contributions from Dimitris Gkrintzos, Andreas Vouliakis and Margarita Chalakatevaki. It approaches the island of Lazaretto near Corfu not as a single narrative but as a constellation of fragmentary testimonies and original sources that, by opposing and answering one another, gradually sketch the island's identity. The film treats the place as a living archive whose traces are recovered through voices, documents and landscape.

Formally the work leans on archival footage, recorded testimonies and careful editing choices that preserve gaps and silences so that absence becomes legible. The visual texture often favors grain, muted tones and lingering frames that allow the shoreline, ruins and rocks to occupy the screen as witnesses. Sound design blends ambient field recordings, layered archival audio and restrained narration to create a spatial presence rather than to simply explain facts.

The documentary navigates themes of quarantine, isolation, execution and political violence, and reflects on how a site accumulates memory and silence. Rather than offering a single interpretation, the film stages a dialog between sources, letting contrasts and repetitions build meaning. It invites the viewer to listen closely, to inhabit the pauses and to reconsider how landscapes remember what people would rather forget.