Hans Vogt Award 2022 goes to Chris Kraus

This year we are celebrating 100 years of sound film, and the HANS VOGT FILM PRIZE will be awarded for the 10th time at Hof International Film Festival. The prize was established to commemorate the pioneering work of Hans Vogt, an engineer born in the Rehau district in 1890: he played a decisive role in the invention of sound film and so helped to bring about a new era in the history of cinema. Together with his inventors’ group Tri-Ergon, Hans Vogt applied for more than 150 patents, and in 1922 the world’s first sound-on-film was presented to the public in Berlin’s Alhambra Filmtheater.

The city of Rehau awards the prize of 5,000 euros to filmmakers whose innovative, conscientious approaches have lent a particular quality and importance to the sound and music of their films.

This year, the award goes to director and author

CHRIS KRAUS

Chris Kraus, born in Göttingen in 1963, initially worked as a journalist and illustrator. From 1991 to 1998, he studied at the DFFB in Berlin and worked as a dramaturgical consultant and scriptwriter for Volker Schlöndorff, Rosa von Praunheim and Detlev Buck, among others. In 2002, Kraus made a first feature film, SCHERBENTANZ, based on his own novel of the same name. It received several awards, including the Bavarian Film Award and the New Faces Award for Best Director. His second feature film FOUR MINUTES with Hannah Herzsprung and Monica Bleibtreu premiered at Hof Film Festival in 2006 and was a huge box-office success, winning many awards, some of them international.

Since then, Chris Kraus has been a regular guest at the Filmtage: in 2007 with BELLA BLOCK - REISE NACH CHINA, in 2010 with POLL, and in 2012 with ROSAKINDER, made in collaboration with Tom Tykwer, Robert Thalheim, Axel Ranisch and Julia von Heinz as homage to their "film father" Rosa von Praunheim. In 2014, Chris Kraus was honoured with the Film Award of the City of Hof. In 2016, he presented another highly acclaimed film, DIE BLUMEN VON GESTERN. Chris Kraus has also worked as an opera director, and in 2017 he published the novel DAS KALTE BLUT, in which he came to terms with his family’s SS past. The sequel to FOUR MINUTES is in post-production.