{"id":122791,"date":"2025-09-05T21:56:13","date_gmt":"2025-09-05T21:56:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/122791\/"},"modified":"2025-09-05T21:56:13","modified_gmt":"2025-09-05T21:56:13","slug":"hungarian-director-ildiko-enyedi-premieres-silent-friend-in-venice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/122791\/","title":{"rendered":"Hungarian Director Ildik\u00f3 Enyedi Premieres ‘Silent Friend’ in Venice"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tIn the Venice premiere \u201cSilent Friend<\/a>,\u201d Hungarian director Ildik\u00f3 Enyedi observes people trying to communicate with plants \u2014 in 1908, 1972 and 2020, respectively. Not for the first time, though. In her 1999 drama \u201cSimon the Magician,\u201d a plant served as a witness in a murder investigation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhen I was a teenager in the 1970s, everything was about \u2018flower power.\u2019 There was a big wave of experimenting with plant communication, using sensors or interfaces to understand what\u2019s happening between plants, how they perceive the world and communicate with each other. It died down after a while, but now I can see a revival,\u201d she explains.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt was a really beautiful and naive time,\u201d says Enyedi, mentioning interrogation specialist Cleve Backster who attached a plant to a polygraph. Now, one of her characters \u2018teaches\u2019 potted geranium how to open a gate.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThis little experiment was based on something I read as a teenager. A scientist put sensors on his plant and realized it reacts each time he arrives home by car. He amplified little electric signals and it was able to open his garage,\u201d she laughs.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThere is this strong wish to understand \u2018the other\u2019: a plant, an animal or another human being. It\u2019s embedded in us. But light humor was really important to me. We can\u2019t take ourselves so damn seriously.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cSilent Friend\u201d follows three different people at three different times at the same German university: the first female student there, a young man asked to take care of his crush\u2019s plant and a neuroscientist from Hong Kong stuck there during the pandemic.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe latter, obsessed with a mysterious ginkgo tree in a botanical garden, is played by Tony Leung Chiu-wai<\/a>, acting in his first European film.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI had a very interesting conversation about it with Tony, because he was very interested in the philosophical undercurrents of the film. We shared books, TED Talks, and he told me that Eastern philosophy is all about oneness. There\u2019s a natural curiosity of figuring out how to be a part of this world together and how to be apart,\u201d says Enyedi, Oscar-nominated for \u201cOn Body and Soul.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s not just about repeating that we are \u2018a part of nature,\u2019 but about accepting our separation from it. There\u2019s just a tiny slice of what we can perceive with our human senses. If we make peace with that, maybe we will start living our lives differently,\u201d she observes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cSilent Friend\u201d could be seen as an ecological or even political statement and a call for respecting nature. But Enyedi resists such big words.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cMaking a statement by NOT making a statement was very important to me. Many changes in our life could happen effortlessly if we just shifted our point of view a little,\u201d she argues.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tSold by Films Boutique, it\u2019s produced by Pandora Film, Inforg-M&M Film, Galat\u00e9e Films and Rediance Films.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIf you ask for kindness in a militant way, it doesn\u2019t work. But I\u2019m always skeptical about only showing the dark side. It\u2019s everywhere, that\u2019s true, but it\u2019s not the only truth. Every day, it shocks me how kindness appears in the most unexpected moments and most unexpected places.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tShe had to figure out how to show plants while also suggesting their inner life.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI was very adamant about it being quite simple. Again, taking into consideration our human limits, there are things we can only vaguely guess. It\u2019s difficult to film a tree in a sensual, sensitive way. It doesn\u2019t have a face. We spent a lot of time with my cinematographer Gergely P\u00e1los, thinking about it.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThis tree was in the middle of a town, which allowed us to embrace human perspective. But even in this man-controlled space there are complex beings who have a life, and who observe what we\u2019re doing. And we\u2019re totally unaware of it.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tFor the 1908 episode, she came back to the work of German photographer Karl Blossfeldt, known for his black-and-white photographs of plants.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThey weren\u2019t exotic: it was a cabbage, an onion, a little branch. But you could see the artist behind them, God or nature, in full bloom. You had a feeling you were on some unknown planet, looking at alien beings.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tShe learned how to look at nature also during the pandemic, mirroring Leung\u2019s character.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI live in the middle of Budapest, on the fourth floor, and there is a giant cherry tree in front of my window. During lockdown, it was amazing to see it change and develop a very personal connection. Apichatpong Weerasethakul had the same experience, although he was luckier \u2014 he had the whole garden,\u201d she smiles.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIn this kind of silence, we could finally notice we are not alone. Later, the film changed our entire crew. It forced them to pay attention and they were walking down a tree-lined street a bit differently.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter the interview, Enyedi shares a poem by S\u00e1ndor We\u00f6res called \u201cThe Blurred Borders.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhen you begin to deconstruct your own personality, you experience as the border between your soul and that of others gradually dissolves.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tIf you look into the eyes of your fellow human, you feel their emotions and realize: \u2018This too, is me.\u2019\u00a0If you pet a dog, you feel its world blending with yours: \u2018This too, is me.\u2019 If your touch lingers on a piece of furniture, you absorb its unstructured silence: \u2018This too, is me.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tYour soul is not just your own, and the soul of all is your own. Everything is transparent, as if made of crystal. Suddenly, you become immeasurably abundant; your body and soul are refreshed, and work, rest, company and solitude fill you with equal joy.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cHe says it much better than me,\u201d she writes.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the Venice premiere \u201cSilent Friend,\u201d Hungarian director Ildik\u00f3 Enyedi observes people trying to communicate with plants \u2014…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":122792,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[49,48,75,68017,337,68018,68019,4186],"class_list":["post-122791","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-ildiko-enyedi","tag-movies","tag-silent-friend","tag-tony-leung-chiu-wai","tag-venice-film-festival"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122791","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=122791"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122791\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/122792"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=122791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=122791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=122791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}