On a university botanical garden in Germany, a solitary ginkgo silently observes the frustrations and changes of generations tirelessly seeking a way to connect and be understood. This is the premise of "Silent Friend," a feature film by Hungarian director Ildikó Enyedi that premieres this week in the United States and was awarded at the last Venice Film Festival.
In an interview, Enyedi explained that the film celebrates the passion for discovery. "In an era when academic autonomy is questioned, scientific discoveries are doubted and sometimes fiercely attacked, I thought it was important to show the beauty of this kind of curiosity, the beauty of scientific research," she said. "It is such an exceptional and beautiful trait of humanity that I thought it would be cool to show it in a film and draw attention to it."
The production weaves together three stories set on the same German campus in different decades. In 1908, Grete (Luna Wedler) becomes the first woman admitted to the university and must deal with the cruel sexism of academia at the time. In 1972, Hannes (Enzo Brumm) arrives from the countryside and struggles to integrate into a campus marked by rebellious ferment. In 2020, a neuroscientist (Tony Leung) is trapped with a worker who speaks another language during the covid-19 pandemic.
Each protagonist experiences a moment of loneliness at the university and, in their respective eras, is captivated by the isolated ginkgo, a tree standing in the institution's botanical garden that they observe in search of connection. "The entire film takes place in the same garden, but spans more than a hundred years," highlighted Enyedi, who was nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film for "On Body and Soul" (2017).
The director also emphasized how human perception of gender has changed over the century. The film shows the trajectory of a student for whom being admitted was exceptional, a young woman trying to be taken seriously on a more open campus in the 1970s, and a female academic who, in 2020, is a reference in her field. "The 20th century was the century of women, in which the position of women in society changed very broadly. So it was a very good tool to show change through women," Enyedi said.
Beyond science and gender, "Silent Friend" explores the need for connection, language barriers, and how human beings face these challenges. When the protagonists cannot truly communicate with their peers due to personal or even linguistic differences, they seek to listen to nature, which, through sound effects and a sensory experience, gains a voice in the film. "It is no coincidence that I placed some linguistic obstacles between some of the humans," commented the 70-year-old director. "It is about the desire for communication, the difficulty of communication, the beauty when it actually happens, and also about discovering alternative channels of communication when the basic verbal form is not working."
This need, Enyedi insists, marks the human experience, as does "the passion for discovering the world, for changing one's perspective. And everything you can discover by doing that."