The Silent Friend – the Silver Spike award at the 70th Valladolid International Film Festival.
The jury, consisting of film critic Mihail Chirilov – TIFF’s artistic director, producer – Laurentina Guidotti, film directors – Elena López Riera and João Pedro Rodrigues, and film critic and cultural manager Serge Toubiana. Awarded Ildikó Enyedi’s humorous, sensitive and philosophical film.
The Valladolid International Film Festival (Seminci) is one of the most prestigious festivals in Europe, which primarily selects films that emphasize human values for its competition program.
A short preview of the The Silent Friend … An old tree stands in the middle of a botanical garden. It is lonely, like the other inhabitants of the garde. Thousands of kilometers away from their original habitat, we can admire and observe it, just as we observe the tree, it observe us. It witnesses to our short, tangled, noisy and troubled lives. The film tells three stories, three tentative encounters between humans and plants, when these two radically different perceptions are for a moment truly connected. Our human heroes, like the plants in the garden, are outsiders, lonely souls and they yearn for connection just as much as they do.
The Silent Friend had its world premiere at the Venice International Film Festival, where it won six awards. It have had won the Grand Prix at the 16th La Roche-sur-Yon International Film Festival, and Gergely Pál was awarded Best Cinematography at the 61st Chicago International Film Festival.
The film will be released at the Hungarian cinemas on Thursday, 29th of January 2026, distributed by Mozinet, but in the meantime it will be screened at several pre-premiere screenings.
Recommendation by Aggie Reiter
Rolling in Budapest 