Hof Film Festival, Germany Wrap Up -- Old & New

In the final analysis the 43rd edition of Hof is an important part of international film geography. It offers an intimate relaxed setting where recent German film school graduates can showcase their debut features and German film business vets can see who and what is coming up and can discuss their own issues among themselves. From the retrospective of Lou Castelwho was honored in person to the film which we honor here for its exemplary production value, casting choices and thoughtfulness depicting a beautiful young woman's possibilities for love and her simultaneous loneliness and to the final soccer match between the townies and the film folks, this festival was a great pleasure to attend.

A bit more on the 43 minute film we are discussing here. Streiflichter or Sidelights was financed by the Bayerischer Rundfunk (BR). It was scored by Moritz Schmittat, a Berlinale talent written about in my blog about music in September, another evidence of the talented choices of the director-writer Lena Knauss, a graduate of Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg. The star, Sandra Borgmann, is someone we would like to see more of and in a larger part than her last part as Ruth in The Baader Meinhof Complex. We would especially like to follow Lena on her journey into features because we see her on a heretofore little traveled road expressing deeply held and seldom expressed sentiments of a thoughtful woman with visual, story and dramatic talents. She seems to be pointing the way to a new thematic approach to female subject matter and internal struggles of female characters. At least we hope so.