EXCLUSIVE: 1-2 Special has acquired all North American rights from Films Boutique to Ildikó Enyedi’s Silent Friend, which is led by international cinema icon Tony Leung Chiu-Wai and French star Léa Seydoux, alongside Luna Wedler and Enzo Brumm.
The film premiered in Competition at the 2025 Venice Film Festival where it won multiple prizes, including the FIPRESCI Critics Prize and Marcello Mastroianni Award for Best New Talent Award for newcomer Luna Wedler. It had its North American premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, and will be released in theaters next year.
The critically well-received film revolves around a majestic ginkgo tree, located in the heart of a botanical garden in a medieval university town in Germany. Over a century, this “silent witness” has observed the quiet rhythms of transformation across three lifetimes. In 2020, a neuroscientist from Hong Kong, exploring the mind of babies, 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. And in 1908, the university’s first female student discovers, through the lens of photography, sacred patterns of the universe hidden within the humblest of plants. According to the synopsis, “each individual is slowly transformed by the quiet, enduring, and mysterious power of nature, as the ancient ginkgo tree brings us closer to what it means to be human”.
Silent Friend is Enyedi’s eighth film, following a career that began with My Twentieth Century, which won the DSLR d’Or at the 1989 Cannes Film Festival, and includes On Body And Soul, which won the Golden Bear at the 2017 Berlinale and was nominated for Best International Film at the 2018 Academy Awards.
Deadline critic Stephanie Bunbury called the film “beautiful, elusive and peppered with provocative nuggets about the nature of life and our place in it.”
Pic was produced by Pandora Film (Reinhard Brundig) and Inforg-M&M Film production (Monika Mécs). Additional producers include Galatée Films (Nicolas Elghozi and Morgane Olivier), in co-production with Rediance (Meng Xie), ZDF/Arte, Arte France Cinéma and in association with Allons Voir.
Said Ildikó Enyedi: “It is always exciting to be there at the beginning. I am so happy that our film will be launched in North America by 1-2 Special, by the team of these bold people who believe in cinema and in the genuine curiosity of audiences. I hope that the moviegoers over there will embrace what Silent Friend offers: tenderness, humor, a bit more than two hours in an altered state which does not intend to deny the bitter tensions of today but rather hopes to remind you that there is something else, as important, that we could rely on.”
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