Since 2005, the German Cinema New Talent Award has been awarded as part of the Hof International Film Festival. It focuses on German productions and filmmakers who present their first to third long feature film with a minimum length of 79 minutes for the first time in Hof. An independent jury decides who receives the young filmmaker award. The €10,000 prize is sponsored by Bavaria Film, Bayerischer Rundfunk and DZ Bank.
This year, the award goes to the feature film
RAW MATERIALS by Tuna Kaptan
A special commendation is given to
THE BOY WHO OWNS THE WORLD by Robert Gwisdek
The Award of the City of Hof has been awarded since 1986 and is aimed at people who are closely associated with Hof and the festival. This year the Award of the City of Hof goes to
the distributor, director and producer Stefan Paul
Stefan Paul was born in Leipzig in 1946. After graduating from high school, he studied German and English. In 1970, he began working as a freelance television writer and editor for Süddeutscher Rundfunk in Stuttgart. Four years later, he became a cinema operator in Tübingen and founded Arsenal Filmverleih a year later. In 1980 he made the first film about the biggest reggae festival in the north of Jamaica, REGGAE SUNSPLASH, which was also a "Tribute to Bob Marley". He was close friends with Bob Marley until his death. To this day he runs the Arsenal Cinema in Tübingen and the Arsenal Film Distribution. With fighting commitment and loyalty, he has remained faithful to arthouse film as well as music film, despite often adverse times.
He has been associated with the Hofer Filmtage since the very beginning and has presented many films, his own directorial works, such as the documentary HOTEL DEUTSCHLAND in 1991 or RIO REISER - KÖNIG VON DEUTSCHLAND in 2005, or films he has distributed, such as this year's Finnish-Irish MY SAILER, MY LOVE by Klaus Härö and the film I GIACOMETTI by the Swiss Susanna Fanzun. In addition, he has played for years in the traditional film days soccer game in the team of filmmakers, the FC Hofer Filmtage.