Documentaries have always been a particular focus at Hof International Film Festival. Society is a complex subject and this year’s documentaries offer a fine-tuned perspective on what is happening in our world. Many films deal with the impact of the pandemic, but also with other unsolved problems on this planet. But if we start to understand where these problems come from, if we begin to understand each other better, solutions can be found. At least, this is the motto of many of the films.
The exciting documentary film programme will be showing:
EIGHT BROTHERS AND SISTERS
Direction: Christoph Weinert (Germany, Poland 2022)
Two sisters and six brothers born between 1933 and 1943 grow up on a farm in a small town in Pomerania. Their different approaches to life reveal how all of them have been shaped, nevertheless, by the family’s history including all its ups and downs. Together, they set out to visit their former homeland.
With Arno, Ewald, Hannes, Heinz, Waldemar and Werner Flemming, Anita Heck, Edith Böttcher
THE WAY YOU SHINE
Direction: Evelyne Faye (Austria, 2022)
We accompany four young people through their everyday lives. Four people who are full of life and have ambitions - finding work, becoming politically active, getting married, having children. Four people for whom achieving these goals is associated with many obstacles, and who are often pigeonholed by society: People with Down Syndrome.
THE PORK BUTCHER FILMMAKER
Direction: Rémy Batteault (France 2022)
Roger, a retired butcher who worked in Beaune, Burgundy, for 40 years, starts a new life as a filmmaker and enjoys quick success. Unbeknown to him, his wife plays the role of muse in this process. A son’s portrait of his father.
With Josette and Roger Batteault
SILVER HAIR STILL ROCKS
Direction: Matthias Lukoschek and Andrea Rüthlein (Germany 2021)
A group of friends recall their life as "hippie freaks" in Goa during the 70s, a time of great freedom and spiritual discovery. Locals, in their turn, provide different insights into the wild life of the hippies. Especially since the beginning of the pandemic, the scene has changed fundamentally. Nevertheless, you can still feel the spirit of Goa.
FIRST WAVE
Direction: Christian Plähn (Germany 2022)
The effects of the pandemic are discussed by people in a Berlin café near Tempelhofer Feld. The café in Berlin's Schiller neighborhood develops into a place of observation and conversation, with flashbacks to the postwar period.
With Tamilarasan Ganeshamurty
LAST ROUND
Direction: Elizaveta Snagovskaia (Germany 2022)
In Germany and Russia, people drink about 10 litres of alcohol per capita each year. Four young German and Russian alcoholics are 'functioning' alcoholics. They try to stop drinking, but drinking is so much a part of their everyday lives that they no longer even notice it.
With Lisa Zeitter, Jenya Sigacheva, Boris Erkin, Thomas
LEVA TILLS JAG DÖR (LIVE TILL I DIE)
Direction: Gustav Ågerstrand, Åsa Ekman, Oscar Hedin Hetteberg, Anders Teigen (Sweden, Switzerland 2022)
Monica, a nurse at a nursing home on the outskirts of Stockholm, develops a special relationship with Ella, a 99-year-old resident who has no family.
With Monica Lyander, Eleonora Nordqvist
BESKO – A LONG TERM DOCUMENTATION
Direction: Ciril Tscheligi (Switzerland 2022)
This film tells the extraordinary story of the Swiss rapper Besijan Kacorraj, whose biggest problem is not having a Swiss passport. As a petty criminal, he is deported to Kosovo, where he comes into the line of fire of a local clan. His great strength lies in justifying all his actions. A documentary examining the issues of deportation and belonging.
BIG LITTLE WOMEN
Direction: Nadia Fares (Switzerland, Egypt 2022)
How can you speak lovingly about feminist struggles with an enlightened patriarch? With a personal and poetic approach, filmmaker Nadia Fares transforms her homage to her beloved Egyptian father into a chronicle of the status of women in Egypt and Switzerland. She explores the effects of patriarchal tradition as reflected in the Orient and Occident.
With Nawal El Saadawi, Nouran Salah, Noha Sobh, Amina Alwahany
LJUBOMIR STANIŠIĆ: CORAÇÃO NA BOCA (LJUBOMIR STANIŠIĆ: HEARTBEAT)
Direction: Mónica Franco (Portugal 2021)
The story of a war refugee who builds a new life in a top-rated restaurant in Lisbon. We enter the universe of Ljubomir's kitchen: see how he has been able to realize his "American Dream" there. But above all, we enter the world of a free spirit and a passionate adventurer.
GLAUBT NIE, WAS ICH SINGE - WENZEL
Direction: Lew Hohmann (Germany 2022)
Wenzel, bard and provocateur, is one of the most important songwriters in Germany. In GDR times, he fooled the officials with the song theater "Karls Enkel" and later with the clown duo "MEH&WEH". Fans from all over the country make a pilgrimage to the Wenzel Festival in Kamp. Songs full of tender poetry and biting mockery, rousing rhythms. Humor and irony in his moderations. Andreas Dresen, Antje Vollmer, Konstantin Wecker, Arlo and Nora Guthrie, Claudia Wenzel and Christoph Hein remember. Lew Hohmann's film tells the ups and downs of Wenzel's life against the backdrop of the Corona pandemic, which painfully slows down the manic worker.
NO BREAD WITHOUT CIRCUSES
Direction: Susanna Wüstneck (Germany 2022)
The film focuses on people who are questioning the meaning of artistic creation as well as telling of the happiness of a creative life. Stories are told that take on a whole new gravity, especially against the background of the pandemic.
ONE MORE STEP WEST IS THE SEA: RUTH WEISS
Direction: Thomas Antonic (Austria 2021)
Ruth Weiss is a Jewish-American poet, one of the first artists to combine jazz and poetry as a genre. She collaborated with greats of the Beat Generation such as Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady and Bob Kaufmann. The journalistic narrative of Beat researcher and poet Thomas Antonic tracks her groundbreaking art and a world without borders.
With Ruth Weiss, Hal Davis, Sojun Roshi Mel Weitsman, Tate Swindell, Rent Romus, Doug O’Connor
RE:PLAY -THE LAST SEASON
Direction: Clara Schmieder, Laura N. Junghanns (Germany 2022)
After ten years, artistic director Kay Voges and the ensemble are entering their final season together at Schauspiel Dortmund and offer us a unique look behind the scenes of everyday theatrical life. But with the pandemic, everything changes and a final farewell seems scarcely feasible.
With Kay Voges and the ensemble of Schauspiel Dortmund
ROBIN BANK
Direction: Anna Giralt Gris (Spain, Germany 2022)
Catalan activist Enric Duran steals half a million euros from 39 different banks in order to finance social projects. It is an act of civil disobedience to expose the practices of the banking system. But in the 21st century, is there still room for this idea à la Don Quixote, an idea that aims to save an entire planet?
SHADOW CHILD - ANDREAS REINER - IMAGES OF THE OTHER LIFE
Direction: Jo Müller (Germany 2022)
We accompany the exceptional photographer Andreas Reiner in his work. His photographs are often provocative, but also testify to a fierce desire for life. Shots of his private life on a dilapidated farm complete this hymn to human existence. Reiner's photographic borderline experiences are provocative, generating anger, but they also testify to a fierce zest for life.
THE SCARS OF ALI BOULALA
Direction: Max Eriksson (Sweden 2021)
The rise and fall of skater legend Ali Boulala and his path to eventual redemption is a virtuoso roller coaster ride. It is told through archival footage from his years as a professional skater. Ali is a person full of contradictions, a thoughtful man with a wild past, an inmate in an Australian prison. A cinematic embodiment of punk.
WIN WIN
Direction: Friedrich Rackwitz (Germany 2022)
Gamification is the new norm of motivation, whereby people are spurred on to better performance through playful incentive systems, which may or may not be a good thing. Director Friedrich Rackwitz examines the ways that people's leisure time and work change when they experience them as a game.
With Claudia Gladziejewski, Robert Spitz
DE HUMANI CORPORIS FABRICA
Direction: Verena Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor (France, USA, Switzerland 2022)
Exploring the inner workings of the human body as an extraordinary landscape. Shot in powerful images, the film takes us to an unknown universe. Hospitals, settings of care and suffering, are laboratories, all connecting the bodies of this world with each other...
THE DEMINERS
Direction: Michael urs Reber (Germany, Falkland Islands, Zimbabwe 2022)
Shame, Cosimas and Previous are deminers who travel to the Falkland Islands to clear mines from the ground there. In the subpolar cold, among sand dunes and penguins, they defuse and blow up the legacies of the forgotten war. The job pays good money... but they pay a high price.
With Shame Mapulanga, Cosimas Ndanga, Previous Mafira, John Hare
IT'S RAINING WOMEN
Direction: Mari Soppela (Finland, Germany, Netherlands, Iceland 2022)
Filmmaker Mari Soppela questions statistics and delves into the experiences of women fighting discrimination in every corner of the world. She brings to light the uncomfortable truths and dirty secrets of gender bias in the workplace. Her exploration of the so-called "glass ceiling" takes her all around the world.
With Rebecca Burke, Sam Walker, Sheila Aly, Charlayne Hunter-Gault, Tarja Halonen
It is our pleasure to present this strong and extremely varied programme of documentaries.
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