REEL | Tony Leung Makes A 'Silent Friend' x SIFF 2026

"I want to find out what plants sense."

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Silent Friend (aka Stille Freundin), a strange but affecting historical tale by visionary Hungarian filmmaker Ildikó Enyedi, follows Hong Kong superstar Tony Leung as a Chinese neuroscientist studying a beguiling gingko tree on the grounds of a medieval German university town in 2020. It's a uniquely engrossing two-and-a-half-hour film essentially about a professor befriending an old tree through science.

While his actual neurological research is on hold during the onset of the pandemic, Leung's Dr. Tony Wong decides to keep busy by studying the aforementioned tree as well as the nature of understanding between humans and plants with the help of Léa Seydoux's French botanist, whom he consults over Zoom. Flashing in between this recent past are two other parallel timelines. First, in 1908, we follow a young German feminist (Luna Wedler) aiming to be the university's first female student and a budding photographer while studying in the botany department. Then, in 1972, a pair of research student roommates (Enzo Brumm and Marlene Burow) monitor interactions between plants and humans while navigating their own interpersonal emotions.

Enyedi captures the scientific language of communication between us and nature cinematically through her encapsulation of time and history. Leung is a finely chosen vessel of our collective humanity and curiosity wrapped around the peaceful understanding of trees. There's a mystical yet clumsily endearing quality to the way the film tries to capture human understanding through trees that expresses our own longing to belong.

Silent Friend screened at the 2026 Seattle International Film Festival as part of the Contemporary World Cinema program. It also screens at the VIFF Centre starting May 22nd.


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