Festival Data:

• Established: 1967
• Genre: General

• Competitive
• Has Panels

Festival Website:

Festival Description:

The Hof International Film Festival, first organized by filmmaker Heinz Badewitz in 1967, started with a collection of 9 short films which screened at a local theatre in a small beer town called Hof. However the festival really began to take shape the next year as a result of a newly instituted censorship code at the Oberhausen Festival. Many filmmakers pulled their films out of Oberhausen to protest these codes and Badewitz took this opportunity to invite his colleagues to screen their films in Hof instead. In the face of controversy, this festival organized and programmed by film professionals, has continued to grow over the course of 40 years, maintaining its spirit of independence and its tradition of screening the best feature, short, documentary and digital film from around the world.

Since 2000, Hof has become a part of ‘digital cinema’: digital screenings of digitally produced films. Although many industry professionals and film exhibitors were apprehensive about digital filmmaking, The Hof International Film Festival embraced the new technology as a medium that is shaping experimentation with new approaches and narrative structures and for producing independent films more economically– and it’s precisely films like these that have a long tradition at the Hof International Film Festival.

Although any film is welcome to submit, it must not have been screened or broadcast in Germany before the Hof International Film Festival takes place. Given that Hof is a football town, another signature feature of the Hof International Film Festival is the traditional match between the film FC Hof Film Festival team (manned with German film professionals) and the so-called Hof Selection.

Film Submissions:

• Submission formats: Digi-Beta, 35mm
• Call for Entry: http:/ / www.hofer-filmtage.com/ en/ industry/ film-submission/