HKIFF Film Review: Silent Friend 寂靜的朋友 (Stiller Freund) (2026) - Germany / France / Hungry
Reviewed at the 50th Hong Kong International Film Festival 2026
Reviewed by Andrew Chan (Film Critic Circle of Australia)
I rated it 8/10
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★
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There is a moment in Ildikó Enyedi's "Silent Friend" when the camera simply rests on the gnarled bark of a centuries-old Ginkgo biloba, and something remarkable happens. You stop waiting for something to happen. That, I suspect, is the point.
Enyedi, the Hungarian master who gave us the sublime "On Body and Soul," has made perhaps the first great art film told from the point of view of a tree. Not a talking tree. Not a magical tree. A tree. The audacity here is almost comic until you realize she's not being cute—she's being radical. For one hundred years, this tree stands in a German botanical garden while humans flutter past like mayflies, each convinced their drama is the only drama.
The film unfolds in three movements. 1908: a young woman (Luna Wedler, luminous) discovers something in the tree's roots that feels like science and prays like religion. 1972: a middle chapter that drifts a bit too aimlessly even for a film that worships aimlessness. 2020: Tony Leung Chiu-wai arrives as Dr. Tony Wong, and the movie suddenly remembers it has a pulse.
What can be said about Leung that hasn't been said? The man does something here that should be impossible—he develops a relationship with a plant. His botanist sits beside the Ginkgo with the same desperate tenderness another man might bring to a deathbed. When he looks at the tree, we understand: he is looking for his dead wife. Or maybe for himself. Or maybe the difference doesn't matter.
The cinematography understands that time is not uniform. The 1908 footage breathes through grain and soft focus—memory's texture. The 2020 scenes are sharp, clinical, almost sterile. Between them lies the messy 1972 chapter, shot like a documentary you found in your dead uncle's basement. The effect is not gimmickry but philosophy: every era sees nature through its own dirty lens.
Does the film test patience? Yes. Enyedi expects you to sit in silence while leaves tremble. Some viewers will check their phones. Those viewers should stay home and watch something with explosions. For the rest of us, "Silent Friend" offers something increasingly rare: a movie that trusts you to find meaning in the space between words.
The 1972 segment remains the weak link—a German student's romance that feels like a good short film trapped inside a great long one. But when Leung finally speaks to the tree in Mandarin, translating loss into a language bark cannot answer, you forgive every slow patch. The movie has earned its tears.
"Silent Friend" is not for everyone. It is for anyone who has ever sat alone in a garden and felt, irrationally, that the old tree understands. Enyedi gives that feeling 147 minutes of respectful silence. Sometimes that is exactly what the cinema should do. (Neo, 2026)
