Associate Professor of Hispanic Studies Edna Rodríguez-Plate and Professor of Religious Studies S.B. Rodríguez-Plate were recently invited to serve on an independent jury for the 82nd Venice Film Festival. The jury was coordinated by the European based interreligious organization Inter-Film, which has generated ecumenical jury awards at major film festivals such as Cannes, Berlin, Locarno, and Venice for 50 years. S.B. Rodríguez-Plate previously served on juries in Berlin and Locarno.
The Rodríguez-Plates, along with jury members from Latvia, Italy, and Germany, watched and discussed 24 films competing for the Interfilm Award for Promoting Interreligious Dialogue. They said that during the daily film screenings – lasting up to 10 hours each day – they found new ideas and directions for their interdisciplinary teaching and research.
Screenings included world premiere films by directors including Guillermo Del Toro, Mona Fastvold, Kaouther ben Hania, Yorgos Lanthimos, and Jim Jarmusch. The Rodríguez-Plates and their fellow jurors named Silent Friend, by Hungarian director Ildikó Enyedi, the winner of the Interfilm Award for Promoting Interreligious Dialogue.
The film, set at the research university in Marburg, Germany, tells three stories across a span of 110 years. A Gingko tree, the “silent friend,” is at the thematic center of the three stories.
The Rodríquez-Plates said “the film lifts up the wonders of scientific enquiry, challenges gendered norms therein, and makes us rethink plant-animal relations. It is deeply materialist in ways that push viewers to realize the immanence of the sacred.”
Posted September 26, 2025
