Join us for a special preview screening of Silent Friend to celebrate National Tree Week. 

Ildikó Enyedi, whose super dreamy On Body and Soul won the Golden Bear at the 2017 Berlinale and earned an Academy Award nomination for Best International Feature Film, returns with a century-spanning triptych that moves from 1908 to the early months of the pandemic, unfolding around an ancient ginkgo in the botanical garden of Marburg University, the fixed witness to a century’s worth of passing faces.

From a young woman forcing her way into the male-dominated scientific establishment at the dawn of the 20th century, to idealistic lovers in the politically turbulent 1970s, Enyedi considers how consciousness itself is historically situated, mapping the incremental rewiring of how people think and connect over time.

Tony Leung anchors the 2020 chapter with a characteristically subtle, deeply felt performance as a visiting neuroscientist stranded on campus during lockdown, whose attempt to measure the tree’s electromagnetic signals (guided remotely by a French plant biologist, played by Léa Seydoux) gradually opens into a meditation on perception itself.

Shifting between silvered monochrome 35mm, warm 16mm, and digital macro-photography, Silent Friend attends to the rhythms of time in all its forms. A tender and engrossing exploration of human connections to nature.

Doors open 30 minutes before advertised start time. All film screenings are ad-free and 18+ unless otherwise stated, and start with no more than a 10 min selection of trailers.

The Cube is a membership venue, please remember to bring your card. You can join on the door for £1.