About art, people and fairy tales

Euphoria, living in the moment and forgetting all worries. That's what may happen when the lights go out in the movie theater and the curtain opens on another world. In the 154 works running in the 2023 festival program, filmmakers skillfully tell stories in which we escape reality, about the fairy-tale lightness of being, the manifold facets of the human being, but also those in which we face the hard facts completely unaffected. The program of the 57th Hof International Film Festival proves: cinema is the only addiction worth having.

With this focus in mind, we would like to give you a first preview of this year's program:

About art, people and fairy tales (fictional productions)

GONDOLA, direction: Veit Helmer (Germany, Georgia 2023)
In Georgia, Iva and Nino work as conductors on a small cable car. Step by step, the two women get to know each other better and a collegial relationship develops into a flirtation and eventually great love. However, this also affects the two's work.
With Mathilde Irrmann and Nini Soselia

THE LANDS OF HEAVEN, direction: Pablo García Canga (Spain 2023)
It’s night in Madrid. Five conversations. Nine characters. Stories. Invented and true. Among them one, that goes on from conversation to conversation, about a Japanese film on an aged baker who is also a poet. A film that retells a film. With images made of words and with words that create images.
With Luis Moreno, Paula Ruiz, Lola Casamayor, Violeta Gil, Carlos Troya, Andrés Gertrudix, Itziar Manero, Gonzalo Herrero and Fernanda Orazi

DOUBLE EXPOSURE, direction: Beate Thalberg (Austria 2022)
Salzburg in 1948: A private detective receives a suitcase full of photos from a mysterious woman. And the task to find out everything about their creator Carl Ellinger. But Carl Ellinger disappeared long before the photos were taken. Who took these images?
With Verena Altenberger, Claudia Kottal and Philipp Karner

FRIENDS ON A COUNTRY ROAD, direction: Santiago Loza (Argentina 2021)
In a mountain village, a stone falls from the sky. Two friends set out to find it and start a journey through wintry landscapes, to encounters and farewells, happiness and sadness, but they also find poetry.
With Eva Bianco, Anabella Bacigalupo, Jazmín Garballo and Carolina Saade

About art, people and fairy tales (non-fictional productions)

THE MIES VAN DER ROHES - A FAMILY SAGA, direction: Sabine Gisiger (Switzerland 2023)
A female modernist family saga told by the women surrounding iconic architect Mies van der Rohe, more precisely: his wife, his daughters and his mistress.. When Mies emigrates to the USA in 1938, they struggle – on their own – through the barbarism of the Nazi era and the war. About the opportunities of the new age and the constraints of old patterns.
With Katharina Thalbach and Anna Thalbach

CINÉMA LAIKA, direction: Veljko Vidak (France, Finland 2023)
In a Finnish forest village, writer and poet Mika Lätti and his friend, director Aki Kaurismäki, work with the villagers to rebuild an old foundry into a cinema, the Kino Laika. A film about a special place and the capacity to instigate change.
With Jim Jarmusch, Simon Al-Bazoon, Nuppu Koivu and the band Maustetytöt

FIREFLOWER - THE TWO LIVES OF MARISA MELL, direction: Markus Mörth (Austria 2023)
Who was Marisa Mell and who was Marlis Moitzi? In this film, the personae of the famous actress from Graz are contrasted, companions such as Senta Berger, Christine Kaufmann and Erika Pluhar remember. With a current look at the role of women in the film business from the 1960s to the 1980s.
With Erika Pluhar, Andre Schneider, Karin Moitzi-Aicardi, Helmut Berger and Marion Mitterhammer

THE GIACOMETTIS, direction: Susanna Fanzun (Switzerland 2023)
The Giacometti family is a Swiss dynasty of artists. Father Giovanni, considered to be an impressionist of the first hour, son Alberto, whose thin sculptures revolutionized the art world, mother Annetta, who was the calm pole of the family or the other children. They were all endowed with remarkable artistic talent, embedded in a life between the barren alpine landscape and metropolises, between the cultures.
With Nelda Moggi-Negrini, Eberhard W. Kornfeld, Giacomo Dolfi and others