Silent Friend

On the grounds of a medieval German university town looms an imposing Ginkgo biloba, a tree whose longevity stands in marked contrast to three intimate, human-scaled stories. In 1908, the university’s first female student (Luna Wedler) gains admission into the prestigious botany department, confronting the sexism of both professors and peers. In 1972, amidst counterculture movements, a reserved student (Enzo Brumm) finds his attention captured by a fellow housemate and the geranium plant she studies. In 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, a neuroscientist from Hong Kong (Tony Leung Chiu-Wai) secures the help of a renowned botanist (Léa Seydoux) for an experiment on the old ginkgo tree.

In Hungarian writer-director Ildikó Enyedi’s unclassifiable film, inspired perhaps by Richard Powers’ novel The Overstory, the rhythms of non-human life supersede any human-centered drama. Formally audacious and texturally varied — its three sections are rendered in 35mm black-and-white, lush 16mm, and crisp digital film, respectively — Silent Friend is a singular meditation on how we connect to the natural world, and to each other.

Strange, enrapturing, simultaneously vast and minute, Enyedi’s latest spends a lot of time considering how we perceive our surrounding flora — but just as much on how it perceives us, which is where it starts to get a bit special, and even a bit sexy. With an outlook disarmingly poised between the dreamy and the matter-of-fact, it presents a different way of seeing, and indeed feeling, the world around us, and merely invites its audience to follow along.

Guy Lodge, Variety

It’s a true original, one of those cinematic events that, once seen, will not be easily forgotten.

Peter Sobczynski, rogerebert.com