Premiere: Hof Critics Prize awarded for the first time

The Hof Critics Award 2021 is sponsored by the Swiss Critics Association SVFJ and the Professional Association of German Media Journalists and is being awarded for the first time at Hof Film Festival. The jury consists of journalists Ingrid Beerbaum (Berlin), Rolf Breiner (Switzerland) and Katharina Dockhorn (Berlin).

This year the award is being divided and goes to two films:

for best direction to THE SAINT OF THE IMPOSSIBLE by Marc Wilkins and
to THE BLACK SQUARE for its production by FRISBEEFILMS.

Constant fear of discovery and deportation characterizes the lives of Peruvian Raffaela and her sons in THE SAINT OF THE IMPOSSIBLE. They fled to New York hoping for a better life. Recounting the fate of this small family in the land of endless opportunities, Swiss director Marc Wilkins impressively illustrates the fate of millions of refugees and illegal migrants with immense authenticity and emotional understanding. He stays close to the reality of their everyday life in the shadow of the dazzling metropolis and also shows the reasons for fleeing their home country in unvarnished images.

In the brilliant comedy THE BLACK SQUARE, an ambitious script by debutant director and self-taught filmmaker Peter Meister entered into a congenial liaison with the courage of a production company. Manuel and Alexander Bickenbach from Frisbeefilms GmbH & Co.KG underpinned the story about a nightmare cruise for two small-time crooks with the appropriate funding, so laying the foundation for a convincing and cinematically coherent realization.