One of the most compelling entries in the closing section of the 82nd Venice Film Festival was undoubtedly Silent Friend by Ildikó Enyedi. This film consistently captivates with its masterful blend of visual rigor and poetic sensibility. The Hungarian director crafts a narrative triptych in which three stories, set in different time periods, are interwoven through the silent presence of an ancient ginkgo tree—a living witness and a symbol of the profound bond between humanity and nature. Each era finds its own formal language within the same spatial frame: the botanical garden of a German university.
Silent Friend © Lenke Szilagy.
The section set in 1908, centered on a young female scientist within an entirely male-dominated environment, employs a stark black-and-white palette that conveys the severity of a rigid society and the weight of science as a moral discipline. The 1972 segment opens to a nostalgic warmth, bathed in Kodachrome hues that evoke the youthful energy of its two protagonists and the vibrancy of the seventies. Finally, the contemporary chapter is expressed through digital precision, mirroring the introspection of an Asian researcher in search of new questions about the workings of the brain rather than definitive answers.
Enzo Brumm in Silent Friend. © Pandora Film.
Enyedi’s boldness lies in weaving these three layers without hierarchies, allowing the slow rhythm and attention to the smallest details—a leaf, a gesture, a silence—to reveal a profound connection between the human and the vegetal. The film blurs perceptual boundaries and suggests a different relationship with time: not linear or hurried, but circular, open to contemplation and inner dialogue. Its images, always restrained, avoid virtuosity and instead become a space of calm, inviting the viewer to see and listen from a new place.
By contrast, and far from a philosophical tone, we find the exuberance of Duse, by Pietro Marcello, which explores a moment in the later years of the great Italian actress Eleonora Duse through a visual language that is both precise and ravishing. Valeria Bruni Tedeschi delivers a magnetic performance, framed by compositions that resemble canvases and lighting that evokes the masters of painting. Marcello succeeds in transforming biography into an exploration of an obsession within the world of theater, although at times he succumbs to excessive emphasis and the unevenness of some supporting performances.
More restrained and accomplished was another film presented in competition during the festival’s final days: Elisa, by Leonardo Di Costanzo, which stood out as one of the most solid works of recent Italian cinema. Inspired by a study of a real-life criminological case, it centers on a woman—imprisoned in a Swiss detention facility for the murder of her sister—who is forced to confront the wound of her guilt after more than ten years behind bars.
Barbara Ronchi in Elisa © Oliver Oppitz.
The screenplay, marked by an almost ascetic sobriety, derives its strength precisely from what it withholds: the silences, the glances, the minimal gestures that replace words. Barbara Ronchi delivers an extraordinary performance, where coldness and vulnerability coexist in a profoundly intense human portrayal. Luca Bigazzi’s cinematography reinforces this essential quality, turning bare interiors into landscapes of the soul. Elisa confirms Di Costanzo’s maturity, offering his best work in a refined, rigorous, and deeply moving cinema that touches the heart through the truth of its simplicity.
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