What the FAQ

The 59th Hof International Film Festival will take place as a hybrid event. There will be on-site screenings from 21 to 26 October 2025 in cinemas in Hof. From the first screening in the cinema, the films are available as transactional video-on-demand exclusively in Germany and for accredited professionals on our HoF on Demand platform until 2 November 2025 as far as there are no legal restrictions.

This may be the case for German productions supported by the FFA and or BKM, for which the rights holder applies for a clearance in coordination with the festival. In addition, events such as panels, talks, etc. take place in Hof. Communication of events in and around HoF is disseminated via press work and the festival's own channels, such as social media and the daily live stream.

The digital development of the last few decades has also significantly changed the user behaviour of cinema audiences. Films are available anytime and anywhere. Audiences can decide when, where and how they watch films. Cinema plays the central role for us. At the same time, we use HoF on Demand to reach a wider audience.

We show our films wherever viewers are interested in cinema. In the same way, communication takes place on all channels. Through hybridity, we create maximum visibility for everyone and the creative work of the filmmakers. In this way, we sustainably promote a diverse range of films in cinemas - on an international basis.

Films can be submitted here until 8 August 2025 at the latest:
https://hofer-filmtage.filmchief.com

For your information, the platform we use for managing submissions is FilmChief.

We do not have any content or formal requirements for films. All lengths and genres are accepted. Films up to 49 minutes are classified as short films.

The German premiere of a film at the Hof International Film Festival is the minimum requirement. It may not be screened in public in Germany, for example at a festival, online (On Demand), on TV, etc., until the end of the respective festival edition.

Invited films will be offered both on site in Hof (21 to 26 October 2025) and on our digital on-demand platform from the premiere in the cinemas until 2 November 2025 as transactional-video-on-demand (geoblocking Germany) and for accredited people, provided there are no legal restrictions.

Please submit a maximum of 5 films that you think are suitable for the festival. For capacity reasons, we cannot consider submitters and their films in the selection that exceed this limit.

Films can be submitted until 8 August 2025 at the latest.

No, we do not charge a submission fee.

We can only accept resubmissions of films that have already been rejected in absolutely exceptional cases. Please contact us by email at before resubmitting your film.

If something has changed in your submission information or if an error has crept in, you can contact us by email at . We will be happy to adjust, correct or change the data of your film.

In our submission form you have the option to include a password protected viewing link (e.g. vimeo or similar). Please do not include a download link of a submitted film. The viewing link must remain active/available until the beginning of the festival.

We are happy to screen films of all languages. However, if the original language is not German or English, we require subtitles in German or English so that we can screen and evaluate the film for the program.

If your film is selected, we would be very happy if you could provide English subtitles even for original German versions and for non-German versions German subtitles.

In principle yes! However, please keep in mind that we rarely have enough time to view films in different versions. Therefore, we recommend that if you want to send us a rough or fine cut version, please be sure that this version represents your vision of the film. In the submission form, you can let us know what changes will be made for the final version.

The film itself is decisive for the selection, we do not need more information and material than we request in our film submission form. Additional content is requested only for films that have been invited to the festival, as we need it for further communication within the festival.

In exceptional cases, we have shown series formats in the official program. Feel free to contact our film selection team for any proposal.

After you have sent the submission form, you will receive an automatic confirmation email for the data received. After that, the intensive decision-making phase by our film selection team begins, which can take several weeks. Once the selection is complete, our programming team will contact you to inform you of the selection decision.

The screening and selection of films is done by our team of experienced film experts: Thorsten Schaumann (Artistic Director); full length films: Inge Hagedorn, Rudy Tijo, Stefanie von Bock as well as Peter Fröhlich; short films: Lukas März.

We will select approximately 120 - 125 films.

The decision is usually sent via email to the person who was listed as the primary contact on the submission form.

If your film has been invited to another German festival that takes place before our festival date, please contact us. We will try to speed up the decision process.

We require a DCP for the screening of your film. You do not need to have this screening format at the time of submission – this only becomes relevant once your film is selected.

If your film is rejected, the basic film information will remain in our database for archival and research purposes. Viewing links will be deleted.