The Brooklyn Rail

In director Ildikó Enyedi’s Silent Friend (2025), a ginkgo tree becomes both witness and participant in a century-spanning triptych unfolding at a university in Marburg, Germany.

In 1908, Grete (Luna Wedler), the first female student admitted into the university’s botanical science department, pursues her passion in a man’s world. In the 1970s, young students Hannes (Enzo Brumm) and Gundula (Marlene Burow) tiptoe around a mutual crush while experimenting with a geranium together. In 2020, during COVID, Tony (Tony Leung Chiu-wai), an alienated Hong Kong neuroscientist stranded in Marburg, develops novel technology to connect with the ginkgo tree.

Grete’s story struck a chord with me. She is bullied by a dated, miserable system threatened by her brilliance. Yet she never makes herself smaller. Instead, she welcomes new knowledge that enlarges both her world and herself. Her strength resonates: my talent can be both my livelihood and an anchor, attracting the right people who add to my light instead of dimming it.

A similar strength takes another shape in Hannes and Gundula’s love story, which expands beyond romance, however tender and alive it may be. Through the geranium, the film reaches toward a more transcendent kind of love: to love beyond the self, and beyond even the human, is what makes the world worth living in.

When I spoke with Enyedi and Leung in New York City, they were deeply in sync, as collaborators and as fellow human beings, coming into full circle of understanding the world on a wavelength beyond words. In Silent Friend, language is never the only way—or even the preferred way—to communicate. Through a smile, a screen, a dinner, and a leaf flipped by the breeze, the film broadens our world until every coexistence—with a person, a plant, a being—becomes proof that we can never truly be alone.

Weiting Liu (Rail): Ildikó, you wrote the protagonist, Tony, specifically for Tony Leung. In your director’s notes, you mention seeing something in him while watching his interviews. What was that thing?

Ildikó Enyedi: Many actors approach press tours in a defensive manner. So it was refreshing to see Tony treating those interviews as real human conversations. I saw a deep thinker for whom it is important to have a meaningful life, not just a successful one.

Beyond being a brilliant actor, he reminded me of both a monk and a scientist. All three paths are rooted in curiosity, but preserving that curiosity requires discipline, sacrifice, and a rare openness. Tony still had that curiosity.

Rail: Tony, what was going through your mind when you first read the script?

Tony Leung Chiu-wai: William Chang, the art director on Wong Kar-wai’s films, connected me with Ildikó for this project. The script came with a quote from British neuroscientist Anil Seth: “We’re all hallucinating all the time, including right now. It’s just that when we agree about our hallucinations, we call that reality.”

I brought this quote up during my first Zoom meeting with Ildikó. “It reminds me of similar philosophies in Buddhist teachings. Is there a philosophical layer inside the story?” She didn’t answer me with words. She just turned her laptop around and showed me an image of a Buddha.

Rail: Ildikó, if you had answered Tony with words instead of the Buddha image, what would your answer have been?

Enyedi: If you look at scientific experiments from the second half of the twentieth century to today, you see more and more parallels with Buddhist philosophies: they have become collaborative. There’s no longer a single authority figure who knows and controls everything.

We increasingly understand that what we call reality is only one possible version, shaped by social and psychological constructs. As we create our own realities, we also have to acknowledge those of other beings. We are not the default.

Rail: That’s what I found so magical about the 1970s storyline. As Hannes takes care of the geranium, the flower can even open the gate for him through the technology Gundula develops. I love how the film merges science and spirituality.

Enyedi: With that story, I am interested in enlarging the human gaze. We are confined inside our own senses, so when we don’t see something, we assume there is nothing there. That is why Hannes’s classmates feel comfortable treating the flower roughly: they don’t really see it as an equal to us.

I wanted the story to invite everyone to make their own journeys with plants. There is so much around us that, if we were curious enough to really see it, we would feel much less lonely on this planet.

Rail: Grete, the heroine of the 1908 storyline, broadens her feminine gaze toward plants through photography. As a woman in academia, Grete faces prejudice and oppression in a time before our own, but still finds the courage and strength to pursue what she loves. How did you come up with this story?

Enyedi: It comes from something I have often experienced in my own life: the rejection of a system. Usually, there seem to be two responses to that rejection, especially for women: you can try to fit in, or you can fight against the system.

Somehow, instinctively, I have done neither. I just went my own way, unperturbed, and followed my curiosity.

Grete also finds power in her curiosity. By bringing a simple flower into the studio, lighting it, and making a portrait of it, she reveals its hidden beauty. It is a flower we think we already know, but through her photograph, we feel like seeing it for the first time.

Rail: The ginkgo tree and the babies Tony studies also have something in common: they don’t speak, but they still communicate.

The film frames language as a source of alienation for Tony when he first arrives in Germany. How did his Cantonese dialogues become part of the character?

Leung: It might not be as complex or deep as you think. It’s just because nobody in Marburg speaks English! Even in restaurants, they don’t have English menus. I thought, “Wow, maybe students at Marburg University would know a second language”—but no! [Laughs]

Rail: I brought this up because I really liked Tony’s use of the translation app in the charming dinner scene between himself and Anton (Sylvester Groth), the grumpy campus janitor. The two characters have a misunderstanding at first, but then a connection forms. What did you think about that relationship?

Leung: As a foreigner from Hong Kong, especially during COVID, Tony is someone Anton might put certain labels on. On top of that, Tony is doing these scientific experiments on the ginkgo tree, which might look bizarre to someone outside his work.

Then Anton cuts off Tony’s equipment and causes grievance. But Tony doesn’t blame him. Because of Tony’s generosity, Anton regrets what he has done and tries to reconcile by making Tony dinner.

Sometimes a relationship doesn’t need words. Neither Tony nor Anton likes to talk much, and that actually becomes the common ground for their connection.

Rail: Anton even begins to help Tony with the experiment! I think the film is full of unlikely yet productive human connections. Another one that stood out was Tony’s Zoom friendship with the sharp, whimsical plant biologist Alice, played by none other than Léa Seydoux. What was it like working with Léa?

Leung: I like her so much. She’s a great actor. I met her for the first time at the Venice Film Festival, and I thought, “Wow, she is so charismatic.”

We rehearsed together behind the scenes in real time, at the same place, even though in the story Tony and Alice are not in the same city. But I was secretly relieved that I didn’t have to do the actual scenes with her face-to-face—I would get nervous! [Laughter]

I’ve always been like this: I feel out the people I might work with, and decide whether I really can work with them. I only believe in what my heart wants. And from the very beginning, I had good feelings about both Ildikó and Léa.

Rail: You trusted them.

Leung: I trusted them. They trusted me, too.

To prepare for the role, I studied neuroscience every day for six months. I went to different universities in Hong Kong to talk to real neuroscientists. And I visited hospitals to understand electroencephalograms. Besides that, I read Alan Watts’s The Wisdom of Insecurity (1951) and Alison Gopnik’s The Philosophical Baby (2009). I became confident and felt as if I were a neuroscientist.

Then I called Ildikó: “I think I’m ready. But what else do you think I might need for the role?” Ildikó said, “No, you don’t need anything. Just come here. I just need you to be here.” She didn’t need me to overprepare, or to perform. She wanted something authentic.

Rail: I do still want to ask about an acting detail. Tony is a reserved character, but there are moments when he sees something he likes and a subtle smile would gradually appear across his face.

It happens when he observes the Marburg students smoking cigarettes and drinking beer, when he interacts with the babies, when he’s with Anton at dinner, and when he looks at Alice through the screens. Was that something you thought about consciously?

Leung: No, I didn’t do it consciously.

Enyedi: This is exactly why I wrote the role for him. In all his wonderful films, he is an idol—lights, camera, action! And his acting style always seems so mysterious—but it may also just be who he is.

I trusted him so much that I thought, “Let’s show him without all that shine and mystique.” For example, I chose the French makeup artist Aurélie Cerveau for the film. Her work is natural, almost invisible, like putting the character of Tony through a naked lens.

Rail: In the end, the camera slowly and steadily pulls away from the ginkgo tree, standing still with its lush golden leaves, as daylight fades into dusk and then night, accompanied by Gaby Moreno’s “Til Waking Light.” This ending was so harrowing that after the screening, I listened to the song on repeat on my way home.

Enyedi: Gaby’s song came into the film when I was wondering, “What music would the character Tony listen to while recording his own brain waves?”

He does it to gather information about himself, so he can better connect with the ginkgo tree. But he is so shy—what would crack him open? I wanted to shine a light on his passionate side, on what’s suppressed underneath.

Rail: It’s the perfect love song for the ginkgo tree and him. Like the lyrics sing: “We don’t know what’s coming, or what lies beyond the bend. Holding to each other while we can, til waking light.”