Inviting superstar Tony Leung Chiu-wai for a philosophical German-majority film centered on a stand-alone ginkgo tree is the latest feat that Hungarian auteur Ildiko Enyedi has given film lovers in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region at its eventful 50th Hong Kong International Film Festival this week.
“It’s a very, very special honor to be here and to bring this film to the hometown of Tony Leung for the 50th anniversary of this film festival — it’s really amazing,” Enyedi told China Daily in a soft, reserved voice.
For Leung, who reportedly named In the Mood of Love as his masterpiece, sees a groundbreaking expedition to non-English, non-Chinese film Silent Friend with a traditional European setting that looks nostalgic and philosophical in visual effects and musical interpretations.
This German-majority production unfolds entirely within a European botanical garden, yet pulses with universal truths that transcend borders and time. In a sense, it showcases Leung’s signature restrained yet delicate acting style that first impressed global audiences a quarter-century ago in In the Mood for Love.
In Silent Friend, this audacious Hong Kong-European collaboration ignites awe — not only for love, but for something beyond: an inner connection between humans and the universe that transcends time and space.
Leung anchors a quintessentially German narrative set amid Berlin’s arboreal whispers, far from Asia’s neon glow — a first for the Hong Kong icon in European cinema. It showcases how Asian and European traditions can be woven into artistic creation, elaborating on both scientific and spiritual themes of loneliness in exploring new frontiers of cognition.
Enyedi revealed that when she pitched Leung for the role of the introspective Hong Kong neuroscientist, producers from all three coproducing countries flatly opposed it, insisting “it’s impossible — he only picks select scripts and has never done a European film”. All urged her to find someone else.
To her surprise, Leung accepted the “tailor-made” offer, leaving Enyedi “overjoyed”. Their first Zoom meeting skipped script details entirely, veering instead into shared experiences “communicating with trees” — a whimsical bond that sealed their creative rapport.
Enyedi explained her fixation: “I was drawn to his profound, meaningful silence and astonishing presence.” On set, the A-list star wove seamlessly into her “family-like” German crew, eyes alight with appreciation for technicians’ craft, speaking cinema’s unspoken global dialect.
“Hong Kong actors are international”, she affirmed, positioning Silent Friend as a defiant riposte to English-dominated industries — proof that cooperation among different peoples “is meant to be this way”, forging timeless tales of human frailty and cosmic kinship from diverse roots.
Bringing this Venice International Film Festival 2025 prizewinner, adorned with the Marcello Mastroianni Award for best emerging actor to Luna Wedler, to the HKIFF felt “a very special honor”, said the director who started her career in 1979.
Equally revolutionary is the narrative heart: storytelling not through human eyes, but a tree’s — a majestic ginkgo, the “silent friend”, spanning 1908’s pioneering botanists, 1972’s Cold War seekers, and 2020’s pandemic-shadowed neuroscientists.
Enyedi, haunted for decades by plant science’s revelations, crafts this arboreal gaze with electronic scores from nature’s hums, timeless visuals blurring eras, and subtle cinematic strokes to the whisper of trees’ electric pulses and chemical communiques.
“Our senses are very different … beings who are observing us the same way we are observing them,” she mused, moving beyond isolation to frayed connections rediscovered through animism and data.
Leung’s portrayal bridges epochs, amplifying the tree’s eternal witness, while Enyedi infuses personal echoes of outsiders’ vigor. As HKIFF toasts half a century, Silent Friend seeds a verdant future, where a Hong Kong superstar shows his audience how far Euro-Asian coordination can go.
