San Francisco Frontiers - Hungarian filmmaker Ildiko Enyedi tackles beauty and science

The film -- a winner at last year's Venice Film Festival -- centers on the passion for discovery and the flowering of scientific inquiry, director Ildiko Enyedi told AFP.

"In an era when academic autonomy is questioned, the findings of science are questioned and sometimes really widely attacked....I found it somehow important to show the beauty of this sort of curiosity, the beauty of scientific research," said the Hungarian filmmaker.

"It is such an exceptional and beautiful trait of humankind that I thought it would be nice to show it in a film and draw attention to (it)."

The production weaves together three stories across different decades on a German campus.

In 1908, Grete (Luna Wedler) becomes the first woman admitted to the university, where she is forced to contend with the cruel sexism prevalent in academia at the time.

In 1972, Hannes (Enzo Brumm) arrives from the countryside and struggles to assimilate into a campus defined by rebellious fervor.

Then, in 2020, a neuroscientist (Tony Leung) finds himself stranded within the facility alongside an employee who speaks a different language during the COVID-19 pandemic.

All three characters navigate moments of solitude during their time at the university; yet, across their distinct eras, they are captivated by the equally solitary ginkgo tree that stands in the institution's botanical garden — a tree they observe in their search for connection.

"The whole film is in the same garden, but covers more than 100 years. It also shows how much human perception changed," said Enyedi, who was nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film for her acclaimed "On Body and Soul" (2017).

— Women —

The filmmaker said the movie also illustrates how human perception regarding gender has evolved.

The vignettes range from a student for whom gaining admission is an exceptional feat, to a young woman striving to be taken seriously on a more open campus during the 1970s, and finally to an academic who, in 2020, stands as a leading authority in her field of study.

"The 20th century was a century of women, where women's position in society so widely changed. So it was a very good tool to show the change," she said.

The film also centers on the innate human need for connection, the barriers posed by language, and the various ways in which human beings navigate these challenges.

When the protagonists of "Silent Friend" find themselves unable to truly communicate with their peers -- whether due to personal differences or linguistic hurdles -- they seek out ways to listen to nature; and nature, through a kind of sensory immersion and thanks to the film's sound design, ultimately finds its voice within the narrative.

"It is not by chance that I put some linguistic obstacles between some of the humans," Enyedi said.

It speaks to "the desire of communication, the difficulty of communication, the beauty when it rarely happens, and also (the need to) discover alternative channels of communication when the very basic...one is not working."

That fundamental need, Enyedi insists, lies at the very heart of the human experience -- as does "the passion of discovering the world, the passion of shifting the gaze, and what you can discover."

"Silent Friend" is in select US cinemas.

F.Garcia--SFF