Film

Venice 2025: Ildikó Enyedi’s Film ‘Silent Friend’ is Tree-Loving Bliss

by Alex Billington
September 6, 2025

Do plants have feelings? Are trees interacting with humans? Is there a way to measure or montior this? Can we talk with them – can they talk with us? Is the natural plant world just as alive as animals are? These are the kind of questions that Hungarian filmmaker is attempting to address with her spectacular, breathtaking new film titled Silent Friend. And it’s an instant favorite – this rare creation is a Film We Have Never Seen Before. Nothing like it exists, and it deserves to be appreciated and loved as one of the best films of the year. After my deeply moving, soulful experience watching this film at its world premiere at the 2025 Venice Film Festival, I can say that it’s going right on my list of all-time favorites. Seriously. Silent Friend is a majestic film featuring 3 intertwined stories centered around a big, old, majestic ginkgo tree in a university garden. It’s an ambitious cinematic exploration of the idea that plants & trees are sentient, using emotional stories to make it plausible. I’m a believer. After this film, you’ll never look at plants & trees the same way again. 🌳

Silent Friend is both written and directed by the acclaimed Hungarian filmmaker Ildikó Enyedi, her latest film since The Story of My Wife in 2021 (which I did not like much). She also won the Golden Bear at Berlinale in 2017 for On Body and Soul. Now she’s back with her best film yet that I will be raving about for the rest of the year (and the next few years). I wrote in my 10 Films to Watch intro that I think Silent Friend will be this year’s Perfect Days. On one hand, that is true and it is, on the other hand it’s so different that I can’t really compare them. Silent Friend is just as soulful and touching and peaceful, and that is the kind of beautiful filmmaking I really connect with these days. Enyedi’s Silent Friend follows three stories – the first one is set in 1908 following a young woman (played by Luna Wedler) accepted at the university as their first ever female student; the next one in 1972 following a woman and man who connect over an experiment with a geranium; and one in 2020 about a neuroscientist from Hong Kong (played by Tony Leung Chiu-wai) who devises his own experiment with the big ginkgo tree at the university during Covid-19 lockdowns. It was filmed at and takes place at the very real Marbug University in Marbug, Germany – where this tree really exists (in their botanical garden). No one can’t recreate this magnificent 200+ year old tree. It’s real.

Among the many brilliant aspects of Silent Friend, the intertwining of the 3 stories is amazingly impressive. Many filmmakers usually just present them linearly with each segment playing one after another. Enyedi is much more complex than that – she interweaves the storylines together, cutting back & forth between them as each one plays out over time. They are connected, but mainly thematically (along with the same location and same tree), and each builds upon the last. One of the ideas within the first story set in 1908 is that this woman is the first ever to be accepted into the university and thus paves the way for women to study there – which connects into the 1972 segment where a young woman is now also studying there and has invented a way to measure her geranium plant’s expressions. This is one of the many interconnected ideas throughout this masterful film. From the vibrant score by Gábor Keresztes & Kristóf Kelemen, to the stunningly perfect cinematography from DP Gergely Pálos, to the tender & heartfelt performances by the entire cast, to the exquisite editing & pacing from editor Károly Szalai, to the themes & ideas within that are explored, to the very question of whether trees & plants can communicate with us, THIS is cinema at its finest. I am still in awe… I am still vibrating thinking about how truly gorgeous of an experience it was to sit and watch this film unfold together with a thousand other people. We all emerged floating, high on the glory of cinema.

What is truly profound about Silent Friend is how many layers upon layers of ideas it explores through these 3 different stories. There’s a deeply resonant concept it explores showing how human connection & human relationships are also important for scientific progress. Each one of them must come to work together with someone else in order to achieve their goals. In addition, this represents the idea of how communication is difficult yet connection is still possible. The relationships depicted in the 3 stories feature people who at first struggle to connect, for various reasons, and yet they begin to understand each other more with time. This ultimately connects back to the core of the film – that we can communicate with plants & trees, we’re just still working out how… And even though they may not understand our language, and trees can’t speak to us, we’re still able to communicate & make new discoveries anyway. Especially when it comes to caring for and appreciating nature. Another idea explored in the 1908 segment is of a woman who’s exploring photography & taking photos in a way no one has ever seen before. Enyedi is doing the same – she’s a woman showing us something we have never seen before either. Most importantly, Enyedi takes on the incredibly ambitious goal of allowing cinema to show us that plants & trees really are sentient and can communicate with us, and achieves this in the most astonishing & cinematically satisfying ways. She really went there, and pulls it off.

I could go on & on for hours about the various themes and layers and ideas hidden within this masterpiece. I could discuss the aspects of trees and plants that she hints at with these stories, and how we really do need to question our relationship with them. I will be watching this film over and over again for years. There’s so much humility, so much beauty, so much tenderness in every shot, in every glance, in every breath of this film. There are a handful of cuts that are absolutely phenomenal – cutting between stories & characters that are on par with the famous match cut from Lawrence of Arabia. The vigorous score builds & builds at the right moments, hitting deep in the chest with waves of emotion and vibration, reminding us that sound can be as magnificently affecting as the visuals. It’s a beautiful tree-hugger film, however it also carefully shows us human relationships are important, too. It’s not only about loving nature and understanding nature and admiring this tree and that’s all. There’s much more to it in every sense. It’s so invigorating, and so moving, to come across such a wonderfully resonant, deeply intellectual, cinematically powerful film that makes you want to talk about it for days on end. I live for this. And now I want to visit this ginkgo tree in Marburg, too.

Alex’s Venice 2025 Rating: 9.9 out of 10
Follow Alex on Twitter – @firstshowing / Or Letterboxd – @firstshowing

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