SILENT FRIEND Luminaries

Screening to be followed by a conversation with director and screenwriter Ildikó Enyedi

For over a century, a ginkgo tree, standing sentinel in the garden of Philipps University of Marburg in Germany, experiences its surroundings — but how and what it experiences is a mystery. Every day, students, professors and staff pass by the tree, graze its bark, recline beneath its shade. Ildikó Enyedi’s profound scientific epic — her best work since 2017’s enchanting ON BODY AND SOUL, which won the Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival — locates three such passersby, separated by generations. In 2020, a professor of neuroscience, stranded and isolated on the COVID-abandoned campus, begins to conduct experiments on the tree’s sensorial faculties. In 1972, a first-year student, inspired by a romantic dalliance, cares for a sensitive geranium; and, in 1908, the university’s first female student discovers a new way of seeing plants through photography. Enyedi excavates these stories from the ginkgo tree’s roots, like living fossils that have inseminated themselves into its being. The cast is led by Tony Leung Chiu-wai (IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE, CHUNGKING EXPRESS) and Léa Seydoux (THE BEAST, BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOUR), as two preternaturally sensitive and curious modern researchers who wish to understand the mind of plants. Their inquiries open a portal into an expanded sense of time and connection, uniting their story with those who came before them and with the plants who have borne witness all the while. –Travis Weedon