Ildikó Enyedi’s ‘Silent Friend’ Among 2026 SFFILM Honorees of the Sloan Science in Cinema Initiative
Today, SFFILM announced $115,000 in awards and grants for the Sloan Science in Cinema Initiative at the 69th San Francisco International Film Festival, which runs April 24 to May 4. In partnership with the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, SFFILM will also present the Sloan Science on Screen Award and $5,000 to Ildikó Enyedi’s spellbinding cinematic triptych, Silent Friend, starring Tony Leung Chiu-wai, Léa Seydoux, and Luna Wedler as souls connected across a century through an ancient ginkgo tree. The award presentation and screening will take place on Sunday, April 26, at 7 pm at the Premier Theater at One Letterman.
The program, which is featured as part of the Festival’s Narratives: International selections, will be accompanied by an onstage conversation between award-winning director Ildikó Enyedi and Benjamin Blackman, an associate professor in the Departments of Plant & Microbial Biology and Integrative Biology at UC Berkeley, moderated by SFFILM’s Director of Programming Jessie Fairbanks.
SFFILM’s Executive Director, Anne Lai, expanded on this unique partnership, which is also responsible for supporting filmmakers at the screenwriting and development stages. “When we launched this initiative with the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation in 2015, the premise was simple and also ambitious: bringing science and cinema together would elevate and spotlight both mediums in a complimentary way, helping audiences connect to and better understand the world we all share. Ten years later, with 40 supported artists and growing, that theory has proven to be true. This year’s fellows and grantees are at the very beginning of that journey—developing screenplays where real scientific discovery and processes shape the story from the ground up. And with the Sloan Science on Screen Award, we celebrate a film at a pivotal moment when it is given over to the audience. We see time and again that when audiences get to learn about the process behind a work like Ildikó Enyedi’s Silent Friend, with the filmmaker in conversation with actual scientists, people come away with something they never knew before. That is the impact filmmakers and scientists share.”
We are thrilled to celebrate Ildikó Enyedi’s Silent Friend as the 2026 Sloan Science on Screen Award winner as well as the five original screenwriters selected for the Sloan Science in Cinema Fellowship and Sloan Stories of Science Development Fund at SFFILM,” said Doron Weber, Vice President and Program Director at the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. “These award-winning filmmakers join a nationwide program that has supported over 850 science and film projects and has honored outstanding directors such as Guillermo del Toro, Christopher Nolan, and Lee Isaac Chung.”
Masashi Niwano, the Director of Artist Development at SFFILM, works directly with the Fellows and Development Fund Grantees, pairing them with science advisors at the screenwriting stage while guiding their projects with targeted support. “What excites me about the Sloan Science in Cinema Initiative is that we’re getting to support a filmmaker at the screenplay stage while the story is being shaped. They become part of a global ecosystem of SFFILM-supported filmmakers, which builds their network of filmmakers, industry professionals, and future collaborators. Our mission is to help support the representation of science and technology more accurately, but also to pave the way for creative discovery by the filmmaker. You can see it across this year’s projects, whether it is a sound ecologist exploring how we experience a politically inaccessible wilderness, a Black engineer confronting gentrification in her neighborhood, or the ethical and communications machinery of a NASA first-contact announcement becoming the emotional spine of a story. We are thrilled to welcome Destiny, Justin, Lane, Sid, and Aditya to this year’s Festival to celebrate this honor and inspire their work throughout the year.”
THE SLOAN INITIATIVE HONOREES
2026 Sloan Science on Screen Award
Silent Friend
Director: Ildikó Enyedi, Producers: Reinhard Brundig, Monika Mécs, Nicolas Elghozi, Morgane Olivier, Meng Xie
(Germany, Hungary, France 2025, 147 min)
An ancient ginkgo tree enchants longing souls across more than a century in this spellbinding cinematic triptych starring Tony Leung Chiu-wai and Léa Seydoux.
2025 Sloan Science in Cinema Fellowship Recipients
The Sloan Science in Cinema Filmmaker Fellowship is presented in partnership with the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation as part of their mission to champion films and projects that explore scientific or technological themes or characters. Awards are made to two projects once a year, at the screenwriting phase of development. Recipients of the Sloan Science in Cinema Filmmaker Fellowship will receive a $35,000 cash grant and access to the FilmHouse, SFFILM’s creative hub for local and visiting independent filmmakers.
Talk Black
Writer/Director: Destiny Macon
A timid engineer develops an audacious split personality to help her stand up to the boys’ club at work and prevent “urban renewal” in the historically black neighborhood where she grew up.
The Green Corridor
Writer/Director: Justin Kim WooSŏk
Joseph Yoon, a Korean-American anthropologist, returns to his homeland on a Fulbright grant, drawn by rumors of a tiger’s reappearance in the DMZ—a creature long thought extinct on the peninsula. As he partners with a sound ecologist working along the border’s edge, their pursuit transforms into a confrontation with colonial ghosts, personal grief, and the limitations of human perception.
2025 Sloan Stories of Science Development Fund Recipients
The SFFILM Sloan Stories of Science Development Fund is presented in partnership with the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation as part of their mission to champion films that explore scientific or technological themes. SFFILM will award up to $20,000 grants to filmmakers in the early stages of writing screenplays inspired by discoveries from the Stories of Science Sourcebook. The Stories of Science Sourcebook is composed of significant scientific and technological discoveries made in recent years as a source of inspiration to filmmakers interested in telling fictionalized stories that explore the discovery’s underlying themes or characters, and dramatize the impact of these breakthroughs on members of the broader public.
Hello Neighbor
Writer: Lane Unsworth
With humanity on the cusp of potentially finding life on Jupiter’s moon, Europa, a lonely and retired child science entertainer gets recruited to the NASA public relations team to help answer the question: if we do find life, how do we tell everyone?
One Inch From Earth
Writers: Sid Gopinath, Aditya Joshi
A group of plucky scientists must overcome NASA leadership, rival teams, the specter of Mars, and the US government to launch a mission that proves life exists on a distant moon of Jupiter.
Tickets are on sale for Silent Friend at sffilm.org.Ticket prices for General Admission are $20, and $16 for SFFILM Members. Senior, student, and ADA are $19. All tickets are subject to a $1.50 service fee.
He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Critics Choice Association (CCA), San Francisco Bay Area Film Critics Circle (SFBAFCC) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.
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