{"id":35841,"date":"2026-05-08T16:31:20","date_gmt":"2026-05-08T16:31:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/35841\/"},"modified":"2026-05-08T16:31:20","modified_gmt":"2026-05-08T16:31:20","slug":"tony-leung-on-silent-friend-and-his-first-european-production","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/35841\/","title":{"rendered":"Tony Leung on ‘Silent Friend’ and His First European Production"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hong Kong icon Tony Leung<\/a> has channeled brooding urban energy for the masterpieces of Wong Kar-Wai, balancing the debonair ennui of Marcello Mastroianni with the quiet watchfulness of Montgomery Clift. <\/p>\n

In one of the few films he\u2019s made outside Asia and in his first European production, Leung traveled to Germany to film<\/a> Ildik\u00f3 Enyedi<\/a>\u2018s mystical, mind-bending \u201cSilent Friend<\/a>,\u201d in a performance that brought him closer to the natural world. He plays a neuroscientist, Dr. Tony Wong, who in the early days of the COVID pandemic in 2020 is studying the electromagnetic impulses of, of all things, a gingko tree in Marburg, Germany. He leads one of three stories in a triptych that also features L\u00e9a Seydoux as a botanist, Luna Welder as a German feminist scientist in 1908, and a couple of college students in 1972 experiencing first love \u2014 all in the tree\u2019s midst. <\/p>\n

\"The<\/a> \"Sheep<\/a> <\/p>\n

IndieWire recently spoke to writer\/director Ildik\u00f3 Enyedi and Leung about their new film. Enyedi is the Oscar-nominated Hungarian filmmaker best known for \u201cOn Body and Soul,\u201d but her filmography goes back to 1989 with Cannes Camera d\u2019Or winner \u201cMy 20th Century.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter watching her movies \u2018On Body and Soul\u2019 and \u2018The Story of My Wife,\u2019 I said to myself, I have to work with this director,\u201d Leung said. \u201cI never planned in my 40 years of acting career [to make a movie outside Asia]. I just let things happen. If something comes up to me and I find it interesting, then I will do it. But mostly it depends on director. The director is the most important person, not the script.\u201d<\/p>\n

Enyedi added he\u2019s \u201cbig about saying no,\u201d rather than chasing roles himself. She said she decided to anchor Leung\u2019s part in the film in 2020, during the start of lockdown, because that\u2019s when \u201ctime becomes fluid \u2026 when human perception of the world and its relationship to nature shifted. It was a global human experiment. Everyone got the chance to stop and reconsider their priorities and our relationship with the human world. The \u201970s was about redefining our way of living in the world, and the world connecting to other humans, and to animals and plants. The first plant experiments happened then. Then, the turn of the 20th century shows the first very serious cracks on the quite pretentious [idea] that the world is controllable, in what the encyclopedists believed in, that we could just list everything and put everything in a little case.\u201d<\/p>\n

Leung\u2019s neuroscientist in the almost-present-day chapter (which is woven throughout the film\u2019s entire fabric) is stranded at Marburg University at the height of the lockdown \u2014 and he ends up experimenting on whether or not trees can mate, his own perception of the world altered in the process. Same goes for the actor himself.<\/p>\n

\"'Silent\u2018Silent Friend<\/a>\u2018Szilagyi_Lenke<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not a science person. For my preparation for this role, I needed to study a lot of science books, and a book about plants\u2019 intelligence,\u201d Leung said. \u201cIt really changed my perspective toward plants. I see them as sentient beings, same like me, same like human beings. I never had these kind of feelings before, and if you have this kind of respect toward plants, then what about other living beings? So you have a different perspective. It really changed my perspective to the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

The \u201cIn the Mood for Love\u201d star said he read up on books about \u201cearly cognitive development, plants\u2019 intelligence, and a book by James Bridle called \u2018Ways of Being,\u2019 and a book by Alan Watts, something philosophical.\u201d<\/p>\n

Enyedi also spoke about whether or not her long-running filmmaking career out of Hungary shifted when \u201cOn Body and Soul,\u201d about an affair between slaughterhouse workers that only takes place when they sleep, received a Best International Feature Oscar nomination in 2018. It obviously raised her profile and exposed her to the often tedious art of awards campaigning.<\/p>\n

A film festival is \u201cmore important\u201d than an Oscar nomination \u201cbecause that side of the campaign, which needs lots of visibility, money, support, etc., is not there,\u201d said Enyedi, whose \u201cSilent Friend\u201d premiered last year in competition in Venice. \u201cMy 20th Century\u201d winning in Cannes in 1989 was \u201ca reassurance to be able to continue in an era where it was just before the Berlin Wall went down. I didn\u2019t get a diploma; my diploma film was banned for political reasons, so that was really something. After that, to be in competition in Venice, then Locarno, then again in Cannes, and winning in Berlin with \u2018On Body and Soul,\u2019 these are somewhow for me more reassuring reflections of my work because money and influence are not playing a part in it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSilent Friend\u201d is now in select theaters from 1-2 Special.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hong Kong icon Tony Leung has channeled brooding urban energy for the masterpieces of Wong Kar-Wai, balancing the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":35842,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[15,645,23592,6,7151,23593],"class_list":{"0":"post-35841","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-europe","8":"tag-european","9":"tag-film","10":"tag-ildiku00f3-enyedi","11":"tag-interviews","12":"tag-silent-friend","13":"tag-tony-leung"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35841","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35841"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35841\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35842"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35841"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35841"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35841"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}