Ten films in this year’s programme received funding from FilmFernsehFonds Bayern.
The opening film of the Hof International Film Festival explores the healing power of painting and dance: A Year Ago in Winter by Academy Award winner Caroline Link, produced by Bavaria Filmproduktion and Constantin Film. Following its world premiere in Toronto and a presentation in Los Angeles, the high-profile film, starring Karoline Herfurth, Josef Bierbichler, Corinna Harfouch and Hanns Zischler, will have its German premiere in Hof. FFF provided production funding for A Year Ago in Winter.
The feature film The Anarchist’s Wife by Peter Sehr and Marie Noëlle, produced by P’Artisan Filmproduktion, Cargo Films, KV Entertainment and J. Ibbaretxe & Co., also received production funding and won the Bernhard Wicki Award at the 2008 Munich Film Festival. The drama is set during the Spanish Civil War and tells the story of an opponent of Franco and his wife.
Cinematographer Jan Fehse’s directorial debut In Every Second demonstrates how closely happiness and misfortune can coexist. The drama, produced by TV60Filmproduktion and starring Sebastian Koch, Barbara Auer, Mina Tander and Wotan Wilke Möhring, among others, tells the story of six very different people whose paths cross with fatal consequences.
Numerous documentaries enrich the Hof programme, including three funded by FFF. Human Failure by Michael Verhoeven, produced by Sentana Film, addresses documents withheld by tax authorities concerning the treatment of Jewish property. In Water and Soap, produced for ZDF’s Das kleine Fernsehspiel, Susan Gluth portrays people working in a Hamburg laundry; FFF funded the festival print. Bassiona Amorosa by Pawel Siczek, produced by Junge Götter Film- und Medienproduktion, documents an ensemble of five highly talented young double bass players from different parts of Eastern Europe.
The Hof International Film Festival stands out in Germany’s festival scene particularly as a forum for young talent. Four projects created with FFF emerging-talent funding will be presented in Hof. In The Red Spot, produced by Münchner Filmwerkstatt, Marie Miyayama shows a Japanese student travelling from Tokyo to the Allgäu, where her parents died in an accident 18 years earlier. Director Inga Nemstsveridze’s On the Edge, produced by Münchner Filmwerkstatt and HFF, tells the story of an Arab student working for a secret Islamic organisation who increasingly questions his terrorist activities because of his girlfriend. Everything Will Be Fine by Satu Siegemund, produced by Nominal Film, BR and HFF, follows an eight-year-old girl who runs away from her overwhelmed mother. German Kral’s documentary The Last Applause focuses on tango and on El Bar del Chino, a tango bar successfully operated in Buenos Aires for 30 years.