Ildikó Enyedi receives prestigious award in France

At the Les Arcs Film Festival in France, renowned Hungarian director Ildikó Enyedi received the Femme de Cinéma Sisley – Les Arcs award, established in 2013 to recognise the work of outstanding female filmmakers.

The award has two objectives: on the one hand, it aims to draw the attention of the media, professionals, and the general public to the discrimination that women still face in the film industry, and on the other hand, it seeks to shine a spotlight on the work of female filmmakers. In 2025, on average, only one in four directors in Europe is a woman.

Hesitant encounters of the lonely

After the award ceremony, the latest film by the Golden Bear Award-winning and Oscar-nominated director of On Body and Soul, entitled Silent Friend, was screened.

In Silent Friend, an old tree stands in the middle of a botanical garden. It is lonely, just like the other inhabitants of the garden, thousands of kilometres away from their original habitat, allowing us to admire and observe them. Meanwhile, they observe us too, while witnessing our short, tangled, noisy, and troubled lives. The film tells three stories, portraying three tentative encounters between humans and plants, during which – for a brief moment – these two radically different types of perception truly connect.

The main actors in Silent Friend are Tony Leung Chiu-Wai (Infernal Affairs, In the Mood for Love), Luna Wedler—who won the Marcello Mastroianni Award for Best Newcomer at the 82nd Venice Film Festival—and Enzo Brumm. The supporting roles feature internationally renowned actors such as Léa Seydoux (Spectre, No Time to Die), star of The Story of My Wife, Johannes Hegemann (New Possibilities series), Sylvester Groth (Inglourious Basterds, the series Dark), Rainer Bock (The White Ribbon) and Martin Wuttke (Inglourious Basterds).

The film had its world premiere at the Venice International Film Festival in September, where it won six awards. Since then, it has won the Grand Prize at the 16th La Roche-sur-Yon International Film Festival, the Silver Spike Award at the 70th Valladolid International Film Festival, and Gergely Pálos was awarded Best Cinematographer at the 61st Chicago International Film Festival. The film will be released in Hungarian cinemas on January 29, 2026, distributed by Mozinet.