More than 20 documentaries in the program

On October 21, 2025, the 59th Hof International Film Festival (HIFF) will open under the motto "The Place to Grow" and present an impressive selection of 22 documentaries from around the world. The films tell powerful stories of social change, personal search, and global challenges—from the existential crisis of a village to bold life projects, moving portraits of resistance to forgetting, flight, and identity. Whether on Nepal’s highest peaks, in the streets of China, or tracing history and culture, these documentaries show how growing through adversity connects us all.

Am 21. Oktober 2025 eröffnen die 59. Internationalen Hofer Filmtage unter dem Motto „The Place to Grow“ und präsentieren eine eindrucksvolle Auswahl von 22 Dokumentarfilmen aus aller Welt. Die Filme erzählen kraftvolle Geschichten von gesellschaftlichem Wandel, persönlicher Suche und globalen Herausforderungen – von der existenziellen Krise eines Dorfes über mutige Lebensentwürfe bis hin zu bewegenden Porträts von Widerstand bis Vergessen, Flucht und Identität. Ob auf den höchsten Gipfeln Nepals, in den Straßen Chinas oder auf den Spuren von Historie und Kultur – diese Dokumentarfilme zeigen, wie das Wachsen an Widrigkeiten uns alle verbindet.

We would like to give you a first preview of which documentary films made it into the program:

ARCHITECTURE OF HAPPINESS, directed by Michele Cirigliano and Anton von Bredow, Switzerland and Germany 2025

The story of a community (Campione d’Italia) that for a hundred years drew enormous wealth from a monumental casino that rises in the center of the village and on which the villagers are economically and socially completely dependent. The casino unexpectedly goes bankrupt and plunges the village into an existential crisis. How will they get out of it?

LIFE IS YOURS, directed by Douglas Wolfsperger, Germany 2025

In conservative southwestern Germany, four people face an elemental challenge to find the path to a happier life. Everything changes for them: their name, their gender, their unique life.

THE ESSENCE OF EVA, directed by Malcolm Willlis and Alex Fegan, Ireland and USA 2025

With unheard songs and exclusive archival material, “The Essence of Eva” is a portrait of the legendary singer Eva Cassidy from the perspective of her parents, family, and friends.

EVEREST DARK, directed by Jereme Watt, Canada 2025

As the number of fatalities on the world’s highest peak rises, one of Nepal’s most legendary climbers leads an elite team of Sherpas on a life-threatening mission to recover fallen climbers from Everest’s death zone.

LIBERATED SPACE, directed by Vanessa Christoffers-Trinks and Katrin Stahrenberg, Germany 2025

The Color Gate—an all-women project that emerged from an occupied house in Bremen in the late 1980s. The documentary shows how the women created a space of their own and how their vision of another life was shattered by the eviction of the house.

GO THEREFORE AND LEARN, directed by Daniela Fritz, Germany and Namibia 2025

Two young filmmakers from Namibia and Germany embark on a personal and historical quest to uncover the mission among missionaries in today’s Namibia. With many encounters, archival finds, and even more questions at the end.

I WAS A WITNESS, directed by Andreas Reiner, Monika Agler and Günter Moritz, Germany 2025

What begins as a quiet photographic project becomes a harrowing journey into the depths of a religious world. Photographer Andreas Reiner meets men and women who have turned away from Jehovah’s Witnesses—and documents not only their stories in intense conversations but also the unseen: fear, guilt, loss, liberation.

KICKOFF, directed by Roser Corella and Stefano Obino, Germany and Spain 2025

In a small Kyrgyz village where conservative traditions confine women to domestic tasks, Gazi defies the status quo by organizing a women’s soccer tournament. As she works to empower women and break social taboos, she encounters cultural resistance.

CINEMA LIVES – ARTHOUSE THEATRES IN GERMANY, directed by Goggo Gensch, Germany 2025

With the last film reel in the Tübingen Arsenal, a journey through Germany’s influential art house cinemas begins, and the question arises: Can independent screens still shape our cultural imagination today? Kino Leben distills five decades of passion, resistance, and projected dreams into 102 lively minutes.

LANGHANS – A LAST DOCUMENTARY, directed by Marco Papadopoulos, Germany 2025

Rainer Langhans—the old hippie with white, long hair—prepares for his death. The self-proclaimed last "68er," co-founder of Kommune 1, egocentric and contradictory outsider, lives with his companions and practices dying.

THE LAST AMBASSADOR, directed by Natalie Halla, Austria 2025

The Afghan ambassador in Vienna, Manizha Bakhtari, has been in a bizarre situation since the Taliban came to power: she represents a country whose former government has fled and whose new Taliban government is not internationally recognized. Despite financial and logistical isolation, Manizha Bakhtari resists the Taliban to continue her fight for the rights of Afghan women and girls as an ambassador.

SOME LIKE IT FAKE, directed by Stanislaw Mucha, China and Germany 2025

In the southern Chinese Dafen, there is nothing that doesn’t exist: a Gerhard Richter available from 30 euros, a small van Gogh for 45 euros, his “Sunflowers” mid-size 100. Monet’s “Water Lilies” 120, Rembrandt’s self-portraits 150, and for the Mona Lisa’s smile you must pay around 200 because, supposedly, it’s not easy to copy it for the Chinese.

MIRELLA, Director: Oliver Bruck, Austria 2025

The legendary photographer Mirella Ricciardi, born in Kenya, captured the fading beauty of East Africa with her camera. Made famous by VANISHING AFRICA, she reflects today on power, beauty, and loss—hidden behind the camera, yet alive in voice and memory.

MS. HU'S GARDEN, Director: Zhiqi Pan, China 2025

Ms. Hu, who lives in a poor district of Chongqing, tirelessly collects all kinds of strange trash from the city center and builds a garden out of it, which looks like an absurd fairy-tale world. Her son, who suffers from depression, calls her “the dumbest mother in the world.” She works hard, but has nothing. As modern business continues to expand, her house is about to be demolished.

NIÑOS DE LA BRISAS, Director: Marianela Maldonado Lopez, Venezuela 2025

Three impoverished children strive to become professional orchestral musicians in a country on the brink of collapse.

ORWELL, Director: Raoul Peck, France and USA 2025

1949: George Orwell finishes his last, but most famous, novel, 1984. This powerful and provocative documentary delves into Orwell’s last months and visionary works to explore the roots of the vital and troubling concepts he revealed to the world in his dystopian masterpiece.

STARDUST, Director: Nils Eberwein, Germany 2025

A road movie in search of Russian rocket scrap in the vastness of Kazakhstan. The people we meet along the way share their very personal tales about scavenging scrap, slaughtering horses, and watching atomic clouds.

THE OLIVE TREE AND THE BAOBAB, Director: Serena Porta, Italy 2025

From the sun-drenched forests of the Mediterranean to the dry plains of Africa, olive trees and baobabs have stood the test of time, embodying a deep connection to the land and its people. Follow the journey of these ancient trees and the stories they hold as we explore their rich cultural significance, ecological importance, and the challenges they face in a changing world.

THE UNSPOKEN, Directors: Patricia Hector and Lothar Herzog, Germany 2025

The film team conducted interviews with the last living eyewitnesses of the Nazi era, focusing on the regime’s participants, bystanders, and accomplices. Almost no one from this generation spoke again about this period after 1945; in German families, the topic was a taboo.

WHERE THE WAVES TOOK HER, Director: Jana Stallein, Germany 2025

For many, crossing the Mediterranean is the last hope to escape war, persecution, and hunger. As more women are forced to take this deadly route, a midwife becomes a member of a sea rescue ship. While Anne-Katrin participates in her first mission, survivors recount the horrors of their journey.

WISE WOMEN, Director: Nicole Scherg, Austria 2025

Midwives typically attend more than a thousand births over their lifetimes, whether in hospitals, birth centers, or at home. The personal stories of midwives from Ethiopia to Brazil, from Austria to Nepal and Morocco become a mirror reflecting the political and economic situation of women, their status, and their demands in society.

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Published on: October 6, 2025