Silent Friend
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“What if they observe us the same way we observe them?”
Overview
Weaving narratives across a century, Silent Friend anchors us to a stately Gingko biloba tree in the botanical gardens of a German university town, quietly observing lives around it. In the early 20th century a trail-blazing botanist (Luna Wedler) makes her mark as the first female student of the university; Golden Age Fave Tony Leung Chiu-Wai portrays a shy Hong Kong neuroscientist isolated by the COVID-19 lockdowns; and one crazy summer in the 1970s a couple discover that the responsiveness of plants to stimulus is not so different to their own.
“Strange, enrapturing, simultaneously vast and minute”
“Hypnotic, mesmeric filmmaking”
“Encourages us to marvel at creation in all its forms”
Why See This Film
Hungarian director Ildikó Enyedi has always has a tremendous eye for casting and this is no exception: only actors of Tony Leung Chiu-Wai and Léa Seydoux's calibre could make a lockdown screen-based academic relationship so compelling. Sensuous and lyrical, Silent Friend rolls on through beautifully crafted portmanteau, aided by DOP Gergely Pálos' freewheeling format changes across 35/16mm film and crunchy digital as the eras demand.
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