Ildiko, why did you choose the ginkgo biloba tree as the focus?
Ildiko Enyedi: Its origins and history were important to me.
The film is set in a botanical garden, not the wilderness, so all these plants are brought there by humans. They are strangers (to the environment); they are outsiders.
For our main plant hero, I was looking for one that is a stranger even among those strangers of a botanical garden. (In the film), the ginkgo tree stands among the plants that caused its near extinction.
Most plants today that cover the whole globe are flowering plants, while the ginkgo is of another system that once covered the globe but nearly went extinct millions of years ago.
Nowadays, however, you can find a ginkgo plant (almost) everywhere, because it’s practically undestroyable. It doesn’t care about smog. It is a very resilient tree. It was the ideal stranger.
And if you look at the three human heroes of this film, they are outsiders as well. They (need to) survive in an environment that is not familiar to them. I wanted real outsiders, because I think outsiders see more. They have more chances to discover something, and they are able to think more out of the box.
