The 82nd Venice Festival is coming to an end: The inner voice of plants, the rhythm of nature...

We saw so many wonderful films in Venice this year that even the most cool-headed critics now admit that the 2025 selections reached an extraordinary level, creating an unexpected peak.

After tasting such intense cinematic delights one by one, we were talking about the difficulty of compiling an awards list among original films that excite with their different dimensions and address the darkest, most urgent issues of the day with their deeply meaningful themes... A film that arrived on the last day inflamed the competition even more.

In her film "The Silent Friend," a unique figure in Hungarian cinema, female director İldikó Enyedi (1955) tackled profoundly serious scientific and philosophical issues, accompanied by a soft, filmic language that embodies an unexpected poetic quality. In essence, she invites her audience to carefully examine our fellow humans and the diverse members of the natural world we inhabit through different eyes.

It invites us all to listen to the sounds we can't hear. It speaks of the inner voices of plants and, of course, draws our attention to the cracked voices of humankind.

A GREAT TREE

Like many things we cannot hear, that we do not actually want to listen to, it invites us all to listen to the inner voice of trees, flowers and grasses, which we generally do not care about, yet to which we fundamentally owe our existence, and to sense the unknown vibrations of their sexual lives.

"Silent Friend" beautifully underlines the inner harmony behind nature's complex multicolored appearance! We are amazed and awed...

Our silent friend, the film's protagonist, is a majestic tree. Unfamiliar to most of us, it's known as the Gingko tree. It's also known as the temple tree. It sheds its leaves in winter and reaches over 20 meters tall. It's a native of the Far East.

Ildikó Enyedi complements this encyclopedic knowledge: The gingko tree is also a skilled maker of shirts! Our hero, having arrived from Asia and sought refuge in Germany, managed to establish roots there. He grew and flourished in the gardens of a university. For nearly 120 years, he has been carefully observing the human beings (and, of course, the initially few human beings) passing by. He continues to record their changing and transforming aspects with the meticulousness of a researcher. While we cannot hear his voice, he generously shares his observations with us.

That beautiful gingko tree tirelessly records the movements of the neurons in our brains, their chaotic dances that always contain no meaning, the thoughts they express, the contradictory habits they display, every observation.

Mastery of Scenery

İldikó Enyedi achieves another unexpected success with "Silent Friend." This success stems from the acrobatics, or rather, the mastery of mise-en-scène, of creating a highly erotic film without a single lovemaking scene, without inviting her accomplished actors, including Tony Leung and Léa Seydoux, to express their sexuality in a single frame.

Most people probably know that trees also breathe. At the very least, we've heard and learned that forests purify the air. So, what is the breathing rhythm of trees? While we breathe approximately 16 times a minute, trees breathe once a day.

FOOTNOTE UNNECESSARY!

If only it were possible to tear off the Golden Lion's legs and award four films at once. Here are my four aces (or lions), in alphabetical order: Kaouther Ben Hania, Ildikó Enyedi, Yorgos Lanthimos, and François Ozon...

However, directors we would be sad to see forgotten also make at least another appearance: Olivier Assayas, Park Chanwook, Jim Jarmush and Paolo Sorrentino.

Jokers too...