{"id":322099,"date":"2026-03-04T22:29:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-04T22:29:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/322099\/"},"modified":"2026-03-04T22:29:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-04T22:29:09","slug":"tony-leung-in-ildiko-enyedis-new-film","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/322099\/","title":{"rendered":"Tony Leung in Ildik\u00f3 Enyedi’s New Film"},"content":{"rendered":"

Even with the upcoming Oscars promising to tie up 2025 with a bow before we turn our attention to the cinema of 2026<\/a>, there are still movies from last year\u2019s festival circuit making their way into theaters. Case in point: \u201cSilent Friend<\/a>,\u201d the 2025 Venice premiere that went on to screen at Toronto, is opening in New York and Los Angeles in May courtesy of 1-2 Special.<\/p>\n

The film<\/a> is set to screen at Film at Lincoln Center, where it will kick off a retrospective of Leung\u2019s career that highlights his collaborations with\u00a0Wong Kar Wai<\/a>, John Woo, and Hou Hsiao-hsien through a series of screenings and in-person events.<\/p>\n

\u201cSilent Friend,\u201d which serves as writer\/director Ildik\u00f3 Enyedi<\/a>\u2019s follow-up to the Oscar-nominated \u201cOn Body and Soul,\u201d<\/a> tells a triptych of stories about humans trying to communicate with plants. The cast is headlined by \u201cIn the Mood for Love\u201d star Tony Leung<\/a>, appearing in his first European film, alongside Luna Wedler, Enzo Brumm, and L\u00e9a Seydoux. The film received positive marks from critics following its Venice premiere.<\/p>\n

\"Beyond<\/a> \"The<\/a> <\/p>\n

\u201cIn Ildik\u00f3 Enyedi\u2019s \u2018Silent Friend,\u2019 communication between plants and people lies far beyond words, but it is perhaps possible to connect with them more profoundly than we previously assumed,\u201d Leila Latif wrote in her IndieWire review<\/a>. \u201cHer cinema has never been content with surfaces, instead preferring to peer beneath the everyday.\u201d<\/p>\n

The review continued, \u201cThe premise is deceptively simple. A single tree in a German university town serves as silent witness to a century of human longing. The\u00a0film\u00a0is structured as a triptych: in 1908, Grete (Luna Wedler), the school\u2019s first female student faces near constant misogyny, discovers the universal patterns of life hidden in plants through her black-and-white photography. In 1972, Hannes (Enzo Brumm), a gangly farm boy adrift in a hedonistic haze of hormones and counterculture, stumbles upon a revelation through his contact with a love interest\u2019s geranium. And in 2020, Tony Leung plays Tony, a Hong Kong neuroscientist specializing in babies who, during the enforced silence of the COVID lockdown, experiments in a new field of botany that could force communion with the ginkgo itself.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSilent Friend\u201d opens in New York at Film at Lincoln Center and Angelika Film Center on Friday, May 8, before expanding to Los Angeles on May 15. Watch the trailer, an IndieWire exclusive, below.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Even with the upcoming Oscars promising to tie up 2025 with a bow before we turn our attention…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":322100,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[146,878,85,159937,46,397,159938,96453],"class_list":["post-322099","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-film","tag-il","tag-ildiku00f3-enyedi","tag-israel","tag-movies","tag-silent-friend","tag-tony-leung"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322099","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=322099"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322099\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/322100"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=322099"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=322099"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=322099"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}