With films from the USA, France, Ireland, Japan, New Zealand, Switzerland, Austria, India, Belgium, Canada, Argentina, Spain, Turkey and even from Yemen, Hof is more international and on the cutting edge this year than ever before.
In her first feature film, I AM NOJOOM, AGE 10 AND DIVORCED, the Yemeni director Khadija Al-Salami tells the gripping story of a 10-year-old girl who wants a divorce. Cody Campanale deals with a taboo subject in JACKIE BOY: misogyny in relation to masculinity and sexual identity. Alexander Katzowicz’s INTERNET JUNKIE is about virtual dream worlds and the search for love and closeness.
Nick Hornby adapted Colm Tóbín’s novel BROOKLYN for the film with the same title directed by John Crowley: Eilis Lacey, a young Irish immigrant, tries to find her path in life between two cultures in Brooklyn of the early 1950s. The German-Turkish co-production 8 SEKUNDEN – EIN AUGENBLICK UNENDLICHKEIT by Ömer Faruk Sorak is about trying to come to terms with two cultures. The film is based on true events. Pan Nalin is returning to Hof with his latest work ANGRY INDIAN GODDESSES. Frieda invites her friends to Goa to celebrate her wedding. In the beautiful surroundings of the Indian coastal town, the young women philosophize wildly about God and the world: about men, sex, their careers, little secrets, desires and fears, without realizing that their little get-together will soon be challenged in an unexpected manner.
Patrick Ryan’s debut film DARKNESS ON THE EDGE OF TOWN combines the aesthetic of the Western with the structure of the classic tragedy. In the rural south of Ireland, the young sniper Cleo wants to avenge her sister’s death, but in the course of her investigation, she is confronted with an unforeseen truth. Anthony Brownrigg realizes the sequel to his father’s film with DON’T LOOK IN THE BASEMENT 2 in the setting of a provincial sanatorium. Amidst the seasons’ enchanting play of colors in the city of Kamakura, UMIMACHI DIARY by Hirokazu Kore-eda tells the story of the encounter of three sisters with their younger half-sister. In VINCENT N’A PAS D’ÉCAILLES by Thomas Salvador, Vincent is no ordinary man, for he possesses a special talent: his strength, reflexes and agility increase upon contact with water. One day he is forced to display his talent in public.
Kamen Kalev’s TÊTE BAISSÉE is also based on a true story: the petty criminal Samy, played by Melvil Poupaud, is forced to work as an informant for the French police within the Bulgarian mafia. When he meets the underage prostitute Elka, he ends up having to answer some questions about his own life. Élodie and Marie are the SWEET GIRLS in the film by Jean-Paul Cardinaux and Xavier Ruiz who have a great idea and occupy the homes of the “annoying elderly” in search of a better life. Gaspard Noé’s LOVE portrays a modern melodrama about the passionate love life of a young couple, with all of its emotional and physical excesses, a love of sheer madness. Laurent Larivière’s I AM A SOLDIER is about shame, the feeling of failure after losing one’s job and how the family deals with the situation at hand.
In GRUBER GEHT, Maria Kreuzer tells the story of John Gruber, who leads a fast-paced, expensive and egocentric life until he is thrown off track by a cancer diagnosis and unexpectedly starts to develop feelings for Sarah, a DJane from Berlin, of all people. Manuel Rubey and Bernadette Heerwagen are in the leading roles. Bruno Podalydès also plays the leading role in his film COMME UN AVION, with Agnès Jaoui. Michel is bored with this daily routine. But when he gets his hands on a kayak brochure, his life changes forever.
In À 14 ANS, Hélène Zimmer accompanies three young friends over the course of a year, a year which sees the girls caught up in youthful euphoria, rivalry, the desire to please, and the tribulations of puberty. They try to find their paths in life in this jumble of emotions. 12-year-Kevin, also known as Chubby, has completely different worries in Bruno Deville’s CHUBBY. He weighs 100 kilos and doesn’t have much a future if he doesn’t stop stuffing himself with junk food. CHUCKS as an expression of a lifestyle, that’s what Sabine Hiebler and Gerhard Ertl’s film is about: Mae roams the streets of Vienna as a punk, searching for borderline experiences until she falls in love with Paul.
It just takes a moment of inattentiveness and Javier’s and Amanda’s lives are radically changed forever in Matias Bize’s THE MEMORY OF WATER. In his film NICHTS PASSIERT, Micha Lewinsky analyzes the question of what happens when you know about a crime which you didn’t commit? The Austrian independent director Ludwig Wüst is back to present his new experiment OHNE TITEL. Barbara Eder accompanies three news correspondents to Afghanistan in THANK YOU FOR BOMBING. What influence does genocide have on future generations? This is the question which Robert Guédiguians asks in his film DON’T TELL ME THE BOY WAS MAD: Aram, a young man of Armenian origin (played by Simon Abkarian), blows up the Turkish ambassador’s car and injures an innocent man. He then feels to Beirut. In USFAHRT OERLIKE, Paul Riniker grapples with the end of life and death.
