Screening times:
Friday, June 12, 6:30 PM
Sunday, June 28, 5:30 PM

Ildikó Enyedi | Germany, France, Hungary | 2025 | 147m |
German with English subttiles

At the heart of an old German university grows a majestic ginkgo tree, its lifespan measured in centuries. As the years pass, the plant bears witness to the private lives of those who seek shade under its branches. In 2020 (shot digitally), a visiting neuroscientist conducts a series of experiments into the possibilities of botanical consciousness. In 1972 (shot on 16mm), a young student is profoundly changed by studying the behavior of a simple geranium. And in 1908 (shot on 35mm), the university’s first female student’s photographs reveal sacred patterns of the universe hidden within the humblest of plants. Three lonely souls, three outsiders. Over time, each is transformed by the quiet, enduring, and mysterious power of nature.

Silent Friend is an epic, awe-inspiring exploration of the natural world. Featuring an ensemble cast that includes Tony Leung, Léa Seydoux and Venice Prize-winning newcomer Luna Wedler, Enyedi crafts a funny, tender meditation on the essential question of what it means to be human.

"Beautiful, elusive and peppered with provocative nuggets about the nature of life and our place in it." - Stephanie Bunbury, Deadline

"Strange, enrapturing, simultaneously vast and minute” - Guy Lodge, Variety

"Enyedi is a master stylist who knows how to create a certain mood, mixing visual poetry with deadpan humor..." - Jordan Mintzer, The Hollywood Reporter

“Trees, like people, are deeply connected to the world around them. We, like they, pick up on signals, receive and interpret them, and respond in kind. Silent Friend” offers the gentlest of those signals to us, in the form of its own hypnotic, mesmeric filmmaking." - Robert Daniels, RogerEbert.com

Winner: Golden Lion, Venice Film Festival 2025__Winner: FIPRESC, Venice Film Festival, 2025

$12.00 ($11.40 at the door if available)