Can a movie be inspired by a tree?
That seems to be the case with Silent Friend, a film in which a 200-year-old Gingko biloba is something of a main character, presiding as it does over three narratives, across three different time lines, each unfolding on the campus of a German university. Underneath its expansive branches and vast canopy, we first meet a visiting neuroscientist in 2020 (Tony Leung Chiu-wai). When the pandemic hits and his research stalls, he turns to measuring the potential consciousness of the tree to pass the time. The film soon brings in two other stories: that of the university’s first female botany student in 1908 (Luna Wedler), followed by that of a lonely student in 1972 (Enzo Brumm) who finds companionship with a geranium.
Written and directed by accomplished Hungarian filmmaker Ildikó Enyedi, Silent Friend ponders ideas of connection and consciousness with a touch that can only be called botanical: slow, serene, sensuous. Flora is featured in almost every frame—often the gingko itself, as when it can be seen in the background of a shot through the windows of the university library. Enyedi and cinematographer Gergely Pálos offer multiple compositions in which a plant or insect is in focus in the left foreground of the frame, while one of the characters appears blurred in the right background. The technique doesn’t exactly diminish human presence, but it does cause us to question our ordering of biological priorities.
To delineate among the time periods, Enyedi employs bright, crisp digital imagery for the 2020 segments; rich, 35mm black-and-white for those set in 1908; and slightly fuzzy, 16mm color for 1972. At the same time, she often transitions between eras—and seasons—by way of quiet, delicate dissolves. These are mirrored by Leung’s tranquil, monk-like performance, which ultimately anchors the film in an aura of authority and curiosity. At one point Leung’s scientist describes research as “an attempt to find metaphors for the phenomena of the world.” Movies, of course, do the same—at their best, as beautifully as Silent Friend.
(5/20/2026)
