<\/p>\n
Oscar-nominated Hungarian filmmaker Ildik\u00f3 Enyedi\u2019s return to the Venice Film Festival competition, Silent Friend, had its world premiere Friday evening as the last film in the fest\u2019s 2025 lineup, receiving an ovation that lasted 5 minutes and 22 seconds.<\/p>\n
The applause in the Sala Grande was enthusiastic and only died down as the cast and creatives made for the exits, led by its co-star L\u00e9a Seydoux.<\/p>\n
More from Deadline<\/strong><\/p>\n Silent Friend stars Tony Leung Chiu-wai, Luna Wedler, Enzo Brumm and Seydoux and intertwines three time periods, set in the heart of a botanical garden in a medieval university town in Germany where a majestic ginkgo tree stands. This \u201csilent witness\u201d for over a century has observed the quiet rhythms of transformation across three human lives.<\/p>\n In 2020, a neuroscientist from Hong Kong who is exploring the mind of infants, begins an unexpected experiment with the old tree. In 1972, a young student is profoundly changed by the simple act of observing and connecting with a geranium. In 1908, the university\u2019s first female student discovers, through the lens of photography, sacred patterns of the universe hidden within the humblest of plants. Each of the characters is transformed by the quiet, enduring and mysterious power of nature.<\/p>\n Enyedi, whose On Body and Soul won the Golden Bear in Berlin in 2017 and was later nominated in the Foreign Language Oscar race, last competed on the Lido in 1994.<\/p>\n In her review <\/a>for Deadline, Stephanie Bunbury called Silent Friend \u201cBeautiful, elusive and peppered with provocative nuggets about the nature of life and our place in it.\u201d<\/p>\n Indeed, the film made quite the impression today, as members of the media showered Enyedi with praise during the afternoon press conference, where she commented on the importance of \u201cfree research and science\u201d which she said are \u201cunder attack\u201d and urged, \u201cLet\u2019s preserve it, let\u2019s live with it and let\u2019s enjoy the fruits of free science.\u201d<\/p>\n Leung, who appeared via video, said the research he did for his role gave him \u201ca different perspective about the world\u201d and that he began to \u201chave strange feelings about trees\u2026 I feel their soul or their mind.\u201d<\/p>\n The movie is produced by Pandora Film (Reinhard Brundig), Inforg-M&M Film (Monika M\u00e9cs), Galat\u00e9e Films (Nicolas Elghozi, Morgane Olivier) and Rediance Films (MengXie). Films Boutique has international sales.<\/p>\n Best of Deadline<\/strong><\/p>\n Sign up for Deadline’s Newsletter<\/a>. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook<\/a>, Twitter<\/a>, and Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source uk.news.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Oscar-nominated Hungarian filmmaker Ildik\u00f3 Enyedi\u2019s return to the Venice Film Festival competition, Silent Friend, had its world premiere Friday evening as the last film in the fest\u2019s 2025 lineup, receiving an ovation that lasted 5 minutes and 22 seconds. The applause in the Sala Grande was enthusiastic and only died down as the cast and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2000467,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25173],"tags":[363497,363496,363495,345708,333428],"class_list":["post-2000466","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artists","tag-ildiko-enyedi","tag-lea-seydoux","tag-silent-friend","tag-tony-leung-chiu-wai","tag-venice-film-festival"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/\u2018Silent-Friend-Debuts-In-Venice-With-A-5-Minute-Plus-Ovation.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2000466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2000466"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2000466\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2000467"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2000466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2000466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2000466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}