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Lavender as a Symbol of Queerness, Environment, and Migration in 
Futur Drei/No Hard Feelings (2020)’s Scenes of Utopia 

Cybele Zhang, Stanford ’22 

 

 

Abstract: This essay explores the final scene of Franz Shariat’s Futur Drei/No Hard Feelings, 
specifically the shot in which the three protagonists stand with a bushel of lavender. I argue that 
the trance-like sequence at the end of the 2020 film is a momentary realization of the trio’s 
imagined future—an alternate, utopic Germany. The inclusion of the lavender is especially 
notable because it highlights key themes of the film and attributes central to this utopia: queer 
representation and acceptance, environmental consciousness, and the protection and welcoming 
of refugees and migrants. 
 
 
  



Parvis, Amon, and Banafshe stand alone in an arid field. For the first time in Faraz 
Shariat’s film Futur Drei/No Hard Feelings, the three protagonists break the fourth wall and 
stare at the camera, which circles around them. The entire film has built up to this final moment 
where the trio makes their escape through the German countryside and is thus especially 
symbolic. The semibiographical film itself follows Parvis, the openly gay, young adult son of 
Iranian immigrants, who lives with his parents in Hildesheim, a small, historic city near 
Hannover. When Parvis is caught shoplifting, he is sent to volunteer at a housing project for 
refugees, where the film commences. Although initially unequipped for the position, Parvis 
befriends Banafshe and her brother, Amon—both Iranian refugees who live in the housing 
project as they seek asylum. As the siblings struggle to establish legal residency to remain in 
Germany, Banafshe encourages a budding romantic relationship between Parvis and Amon, who 
is still coming to terms with his sexuality. Between scenes in the housing project, the film cuts to 
Parvis going on Grindr dates and walking home after late nights clubbing—a liberating world 
that he begins to expose the siblings to. In addition to centering themes of sexuality, the film also 
grapples with complex questions of nationality and inequity; despite their differing immigration 
statuses and varied perspectives on Germany and Iran, all three protagonists feel a lack of 
belonging, which they combat by imagining a more accepting future. The film ends with 
Banafshe fleeing the housing project after she learns that the police are on their way to deport 
her, and Parvis promises to take care of her brother. Before she flees, the trio shares a final 
moment together, running through the countryside, momentarily realizing their idealized 
Germany—“the world [that] is ours,” to paraphrase Banafshe’s exultant shout during the 
sequence (Shariat, 2020, 1:21:23).1 This world is epitomized by a long shot of the three standing 
together with a bushel of lavender—which will prove to be the final time the three are pictured 
together. The rural, natural scene and the inclusion of lavender, in particular, stresses the 
interconnection of plants and humans, which comes up throughout the film. In this final image of 
queer utopia, the bouquet symbolizes the pro-LGBTQ+, pro-climate justice, and pro-immigration 
values that the three fight for, and the scene thus becomes a liminal embodiment of the 
alternative Germany they seek. 

On a facile level, this trance-like scene in nature stands apart cinematically because it 
cuts between imagined moments, creating the sense of an alternative reality as if in a dream. 
Running from the police, the three seek the only place they can be together: a fantasy land. 
Constricted by legal statute and prejudice, the sequence offers a momentary escape, serving 
arguably as the climax of the entire film. The otherworldly scene cuts sporadically between 
imagined moments of serenity and joy—from Parvis and Amon eating sushi to Banafshe rapping 
atop a Mercedes-Benz.2 The oscillating images at first glance are thus seemingly disconnected. 
Some moments are reinterpretations of prior events in the film, while others are entirely new, as 

 
1 Still in the primary frame of the film’s narrative, prior to the trance-like interlude, Banafshe declares “the world is 
ours” in Farsi. 
2 The fact that this still shot was selected for promotional images further emphasizes the idea that this scene (the 
three standing in the field as Banafshe holds the lavender) is the climax of the movie and embodies the overarching 
message of the film. Scenes of the trance-like utopia are from 1:21:23 to 1:22:14 (Shariat, 2020). 



if an experience that could happen in the future in the trio’s idealized Germany. In a longer shot 
within the sequence, mentioned prior, Parvis, Amon, and Banafshe stand in an unnatural 
triangular placement, drawing attention to the scene. This particular moment, with the camera 
circling the trio, in fact, rejects its own cinematic format and dissolves the barrier that 
conventionally separates the unknowing subject within the film from the observer on the other 
side of the screen. The three stare at the viewer, breaking the fourth wall, and draw attention to 
their intimate connection with the implied viewer, as if the viewer is in the field, too. At the same 
time, the direct gaze into the camera also highlights the trio’s consciousness of the scene as a 
man-made creation in a film—it is not reality that they live in, but they exist in a created world 
that they imagine and mold. This image of the trio standing in the field mirrors a similar shot just 
seconds before, but there is one difference: the addition of lavender in Banafshe’s arms.3 The 
similarity between the scenes thus triggers an eerie sense of déjà vu, but the slight variation also 
catches the viewer’s eye, prompting the question why the bouquet is needed in the imagined 
scene. The remainder of this essay explores what lavender specifically and plants broadly thus 
add to the scene through the queerness that it symbolizes. 

Throughout the film, Shariat links characters to their natural surroundings, so the final 
lavender scene in the countryside is a logical progression from the images of connected plants 
and queer humans that proceed it.4 Despite the movie’s relatively urban setting in suburban 
Hildesheim, nature is everywhere—especially at key moments in the plot’s progression. Amon 
first approaches Parvis at the refugee shelter with an offering of sunflower seeds, a snack 
symbolic of potential growth and new beginnings (Shariat, 2020, 12:28). The first time the 
viewer sees Parvis and Banafshe interact is in the sibling’s plant filled room, establishing the 
plants’ association with the domestic (Shariat, 2020, 16:55). Parvis and Amon’s first 
confrontation is on a forested hill as they walk up from a lake (Shariat, 2020, 22:30). And Parvis 
and Amon’s first sexual encounter is in the former’s wood paneled bedroom (Shariat, 2020, 
45:40). From the film’s start to end, plant-life in some form is present. Even in the film’s closing 
scene, Banafshe’s voicemail message, which does not inherently have a visual component, plays 
over a montage of various plants (Shariat, 2020, 1:26:40). As Banafshe speaks, the screen fills 
completely with changing natural images—shades of green and the textures of leaves, bark, or 
cacti—as if the plants themselves are personified and talk to the viewer. In this final scene most 
explicitly, plants and humans merge on screen.5  

Shariat’s focus on the connection between plants and humans, especially in relation to 
sexuality, is not a novel idea. The sexuality of plants, in fact, has roots in imperialist, eighteenth 
century botany (Sandilands, 2007). Carl Linnaeus notably asserted that plants are “possessors of 

 
3 Shariat includes two near identical shots of the trio standing in the field; in one, they hold nothing (1:21:23), and in 
another Banafshe holds a bushel of lavender (1:22:05).  
4 To further this connection with flora and fauna, the film’s promotional materials are rife with natural imagery. The 
Futur Drei/No Hard Feelings poster includes a plant stalk out of focus up the middle of the photo and the movie’s 
Instagram has decorative floral art and photographs, among other examples.  
5 Another example of plant and human merging is through Parvis’ word choice for his German hookup at the 
beginning of the film: jung gebliebene Kartoffeln or young potatoes—that is, unripe or prematurely harvested 
(Shariat, 2020, 20:35) 



a sexual life comparable to that of humans”—but not every plant fits into his heteronormative 
mold (Moore, 2005). In “Clandestine Marriage: Botany and Romantic Culture,” Theresa Kelley 
provides a queer caveat to Linnaeus’ argument and posits that “there was (and remains) 
something decidedly queer in [plants’] refusal to conform to the sexual categories on which 
Linnaean taxonomy rests, which are figured as kinds of “marriage” between male stamens and 
female pistils” (Sandilands, 2007). Just as plants in real life defy the social and sexual 
expectations of heteronormative Linnaean thought, plants in Futur Drei/No Hard Feelings also 
serve as a symbol of queerness. The three protagonists, like plants, push back against 
heteronormative, European conventions and forge relationships and a boundless world of their 
own design.   

In the final scene of the trio together, the lavender bushel serves as a living manifestation 
that no boundaries or categories exist in the trio’s imagined utopia. Shariat positions the flower 
and humans on equal levels within the kaleidoscopic scene to create a sense of fluidity between 
animal and vegetable, man and woman, citizen and asylum seeker, imagined and real, and 
present and future. Catriona Sandilands writes on the inherent queerness of plants:  

The sheer number and variety of plant species; their categorical fluidity; their ability to 
trouble firmly drawn lines between activity and passivity, animal and vegetable (as seen 
in carnivorous, fast-moving plants like Venus flytraps); and their radically different forms 
of embodiment, growth, and proliferation still call into question some of the ways in 
which EuroWestern understandings of liveliness are based on a privileging of animal 
(really, of human) being. Plants, in other words, still queer life. (Sandilands, 2007)  
 

By asserting the “liveliness” of the lavender in the trio’s utopia, Shariat upsets existing 
hierarchies. The central placement of the live plant also asserts the liveliness of the marginalized 
characters that bear the flowers—implicitly arguing for the equality of queer people, racial 
minorities, migrants, and any other marginalized groups. As Jeffery T. Nealon writes, “the 
version of life [plants] open up to conversation far exceeds the reach of current discourses about 
human rights, recognition, and identity: again, plants decidedly queer the field of living and draw 
biopolitical stories toward a more complex telling” (Sandilands, 2007). Plant-life presence in the 
scene thus becomes the agent for larger narrative, and its central positioning asserts that 
discourse on such biopolitical topics is core to this imagined future. 
 Banafshe does not carry just any plant but lavender, specifically, and Shariat strategically 
selects this flower for its long history as a symbol of queerness, as Banafshe metaphorically 
brings queerness into the imagined utopia. Within the larger narrative, Banafshe helps her 
brother come to terms with his sexuality and her presence in the trace-like scene is similar, 
helping to usher in similar acceptance into the alternative future. Historically, the color, plant, 
and term lavender were covert signals of gay men’s identity in order to signal their sexuality to 
other gay men, while avoiding public persecution (Ellis, 2020). Karen Stollznow writes of its use 
in the nineteenth century “Within the community, a gay man might be called a lavender 
lad, lavender boy, or a man with a dash of lavender… At the time, the scent of lavender was 



often associated with effeminate men, while the colors lavender, violet, mauve, lilac, and purple 
came to symbolize flamboyance, art, the aesthetic, and same-sex desire” (Stollznow, 2020; 
Hastings, 2020).6 “Lavender” has also been used as a derogatory term, but in recent decades 
queer people have reclaimed the word as a symbol of empowerment and pride.7 The trio’s 
lavender, given that it is a German film, may also allude to Felix Rexhausen’s Lavendelschwert 
(1966) or “lavender sword,” one of the only texts explicitly about gay Germans from the post-
war period. Thus, in the trance-like imagined scene, lavender also carries these queer, prideful 
connotations. It is especially significant that Banafshe carries the lavender, rather than Parvis or 
Amon, because the kaleidoscopic scene also highlights her own queerness. A few seconds prior 
in the imagined sequence, she kisses another woman as the camera passes through a beaded 
curtain—a metaphor for her coming out of the closet. Thus, Banafshe’s bouquet emphasizes her 
own “dash of lavender” (Shariat, 2020, 1:21:45).  A woman holding the lavender is also 
reminiscent of Lavender Menace, an informal group of lesbian radical feminists formed to 
protest the exclusion of lesbians and lesbian issues from the feminist movement in the United 
States in the 1970’s. The flower’s presence within the scene is both a prideful acknowledgement 
of the characters’ own sexualities and serves an invitation for the viewer to enter a “lavender” 
world where queerness is embraced. 
 Another pro-LGBTQI+ function of the lavender is to emphasize that, contrary to the 
common assumption, homosexuality is not a biological end. If the lavender and plants more 
broadly symbolize life, Banafshe carrying the bouquet is also a metaphor for her bringing life 
into the world with the two men behind her. Banafshe even cradles the lavender like a child. The 
bushel may represent the idea of future human offspring in their dream-like utopia, but it could 
also connote a more abstract idea of procreation. In Strange Natures, Nicole Seymour 
encourages readers to reconfigure “reproductivity and futurity” and “attend to how worlds can 
have ‘myriad non-reproductive but nonetheless generative interactions tak[ing] place between 
different species and ecological elements’” (Schoppelrei, 2020). Elizabeth Schoppelrei applies 
Seymour’s theory to nineteenth century queer poems, but the same idea of alternative forms of 
reproduction rings true in the context of Futur Drei/No Hard Feelings. Banafshe and the 
lavender are one example of this plant-human symbiosis; another is Amon cultivating and 
finding refuge in the plants in his room at the housing project. Schoppelrei writes that “the ethics 
and care found in the interactions between plants and woman (and the blurring of these two 

 
6 Another important historical linkage between lavender and queerness was the “Lavender Scare,” a moral panic 
movement that paralleled McCarthyism and the Red Scare in the U.S. Rather than root out communism, the 
“Lavender Scare” in the mid-twentieth century sought the mass dismissal of queer people from government service. 
Lavender also brings to mind the term “lavender marriage”— a marriage of convenience between a gay man and 
woman in order to afford a protective façade. The idea of a marriage of convenience is especially relevant in the 
film’s context because Banafshe’s male boss’ makes inappropriate sexual advances and offers a marriage of 
convenience that would allow her to escape deportation (Shariat, 2020, 54:30).  
7 “In the 1960s and 70s, demonstrators and activists wore lavender during events that included a march to 
commemorate the Stonewall Riots; decades later after the 2016 [United States] presidential election, Gilbert Baker 
reworked his rainbow flag design to include a lavender stripe so that the flag would have ‘another color to represent 
diversity in the age of Trump’” (Ellis). 



entities) unravels a series of generative acts that make new kinships legible.” In the film’s 
context, Parvis, Amon, and Banafshe’s interaction with the natural world they escape to is what 
provides them with the safety and freedom to imagine and momentarily create the utopia they 
seek—a place in which they forge “new kinships,” interpersonally and with the natural world. As 
Schoppelrei also notes of the poems she analyzes, the intimacy of plant and human thus 
“weakens heteronormative futurity and serves as an investment in hopeful spaces of interspecies 
intimacy and futures of creative and caring kinship.” The trio in Futur Drei/No Hard Feelings 
similarly gives the implied viewer a glimpse unto an alternative queer world that decenters the 
heterosexual, nuclear family and instead presents a queer story through nature and, to paraphrase 
Schoppelrei, introduces a blurry “space of possibility” for any other form of intimacy and 
kinship. 
 Placing so much symbolism on the lavender implicitly signals a broader argument for the 
importance of nature and the necessity of climate justice for the preservation of such resources. 
In the utopia scene, the purple lavender contrasts sharply with the brown, dry landscape the trio 
stands in. The Germany they live in is barren, aside from a few distant trees. The visual contrast 
between vibrant flowers and bleak countryside stresses the physical impact of climate change. If 
viewing humans and plants as interconnected and one in the same, as described earlier, saving 
nature thus also goes hand-in-hand with preserving human life. Nealon argues that this 
interspecies bond is especially important in the “the catastrophic climate and ecological 
devastation that is our biopolitical present” because “vegetality is a more appropriate description 
of life than the individual, organismic human-animal image has ever been” (Sandilands, 2007). 
Seymour describes a related phenomenon; she argues that futurity is an implicitly queer concept 
and queer values entail “caring not (just) about the individual, the family or one’s descendants, 
but about the other species and persons to whom one has no immediate relations”—that is, queer 
futurity is inherently linked with all forms of life (Seymour 2013). Parvis models this sense of 
universal care when he comes to love both Amon and Banafshe, and Parvis verbalizes 
interdependence when he promises to “keep an eye on” Amon for the fleeing Banafshe (Shariat, 
2020, 1:22:57). But lavender, and environment more broadly, is also one such species deserving 
of care. In the utopian montage, Banafshe extends the flowers in front of her, as if asking the 
viewer to take hold of the important plant and prompt a positive change to embrace and save the 
natural world.  
 The contrast between barren landscape and blooming lavender in Banafshe’s arms also 
symbolizes the value that immigrants bring to Germany. Following Seymour’s logic, the plant 
life, and by extension human life, in Germany is struggling. Despite Banafshe being turned away 
by federal immigration services, the trio carry the symbol of life that the landscape (i.e. Germany 
at-large) lacks. Given the ongoing debate about refugees in German politics as well as the film’s 
direct engagement with these topics, it is no surprise that immigration is a theme that permeates 
into the scene of the imagined utopia.8 In the vision, the trio create an alternative Germany where 

 
8 Since 2015 in particular, when then-Chancellor Angela Merkel vowed to accept refugees into Germany, granting 
asylum and taking in refugees has been an especially controversial topic in Germany. Although following the release 



deportation is of no concern. The topic and politics around it never come up in the minute-long 
sequence, yet the three appear to remain together in Germany. The absence of discussion of 
immigration status in the utopian interlude thus implicitly argues against contemporary practices 
of deportation. Looking through the lens of immigration status, lavender is again an apt choice 
for the climactic scene because the plant is not indigenous to Germany; while lavender grows 
there today thanks to global trade and advanced farming techniques, the plant originates in Iran, 
the Mediterranean coast, Atlantic Islands, Asia Minor, and India (Quin 1864; “Lavender,” n.d.). 
Thus lavender itself is an example of how imports, and by extension immigrants, benefit 
Germany. 
 Although the lavender scene lasts for mere seconds of the film, the fantastical look into 
an alternative future is highly symbolic and impactful. The dream-like scene focuses the 
audience’s attention on the agency of the three German-Iranian youth and the world they 
create—an inherently queer, climate-conscious version of Germany that unabashedly welcomes 
refugees. The dynamic scene ties together Futur Drei/No Hard Feelings’ assertions about the 
interconnection of plants and humans and the creation of a new form of kinship and love among 
other somewhat radical, although not entirely novel, declarations. The moment in the field as the 
three protagonists stand in a triangle is the final glimpse that the audience has of them together 
and perhaps is the final image they have of each other, too, before Banafshe departs.9 Thus, their 
creation of utopia, no matter how fleeting, lingers in both the minds of the implied audience and 
the characters themselves. Although the idealized version of Germany that Parvis, Amon, and 
Banafshe present is far from reality, Shariat’s momentary vision into such a world prompts the 
implied viewer to buy into the plausibility of such a future, too.  
 

 
  

 
of the film, such debate has been recharged in Germany in the last year with the influx of refugees from Afghanistan 
and Ukraine.  
9 One may argue that their triangular placement itself is queer, especially in the German context, and is deliberately 
symbolic of the pink triangle, the symbol that the Nazi’s forced homosexual men to wear during the Holocaust. In 
Germany and beyond, the pink triangle has since been reclaimed as a symbol of gay pride Another interpretation of 
their triangular stance is that this shape disperses power equally amongst the three—each lie at the tip of the 
equilateral triangle so no one person is central to the narrative or the imagine future.  



References 
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Foundation, Retrieved from:  
https://www.osgf.org/blog/2020/6/29/vi0rxptrmtd4v8n2epbm3otxj56z5o  

 
Hastings, C. (2020). “How lavender became a symbol of LGBTQ resistance,” CNN, Retrieved  

from: https://www.cnn.com/style/article/lgbtq-lavender-symbolism-pride/index.html 
 
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https://www.sevenoakslavenderfarm.com/aboutlavender 
 
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