Silent Friend (2025)

Directed by

Ildikó Enyedi

Genre

drama film

Country

Hong Kong, Germany, France, Hungary

Runtime

2h 27m

Rated

10

Rating

7.0 of 10 from 35 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A single ginkgo tree in a German university town connects three separate stories set in 1908, 1972, and 2020. Each story follows different characters whose lives intersect with the tree across time.

episodiccontemplativequietmelancholicslow-burnreflectivepoeticobservational

What happens

Silent Friend (German: Stiller Freund) is a 2025 historical drama film written and directed by Ildikó Enyedi. Starring Tony Leung Chiu-wai, Léa Seydoux, Luna Wedler, Sylvester Groth and Martin Wuttke, it follows a single ginkgo tree through three loosely connected stories in different eras: 1908, 1972, and 2020, taking place in the old university town of Marburg, Germany. The film had its world premiere in the main competition of the 82nd Venice International Film Festival on 5 September 2025, where it won the FIPRESCI Prize and the Marcello Mastroianni Award for Wedler. It was theatrically released in Germany by Pandora Film on 15 January 2026. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

Trailer

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