Biography
Florian Hoffmann was born in Berlin in 1987. After graduating from high school, he worked in development cooperation in West Africa. In 2008, the Swiss citizen began studying ethnology, sociology and political science in Basel. In addition, he gained practical film experience as a sound engineer on the project "24 Hours Berlin" (2009) and the documentary "Der innere Krieg" (2000). He acted as camera assistant on his mother Heidi Specogna's film "Das Schiff des Torjägers" ("The Goalgetter's Ship"), and also participated in various capacities in other of her projects.
After graduating in 2011, Hoffmann moved to Berlin, where he studied directing at the German Film and Television Academy Berlin (dffb). As a student there he realized several short documentaries. The 18-minute "Hotel der Diktatoren" ("The Dictator's Hotel", 2015), about a luxury hotel in the Central African Republic where several dictators have stayed over the years, and which is now a ghost hotel waiting for tourists to return, screened at several festivals. Hoffmann's feature-length documentary "Arlette. Mut ist ein Muskel" ("Arlette. Courage is a Muscle", 2015), about a war-wounded girl from the Central African Republic who receives medical treatment in Berlin while a new war breaks out in her homeland. The film won Best Documentary at the Bushwick Film Festival (USA) and Best Film at MakeDox (North Macedonia); Hoffmann received the Director's Award at the North Carolina Film Festival (USA).
Hoffmann's dffb graduation film "Stille Post" ("Whispers of War") premiered at the Hofer Filmtage in October 2021. At the Thessaloniki Film Festival and the Tallinn Black Nights Festival, the feature film about a Berlin elementary school teacher who is confronted with the reality of war in his Kurdish birthplace through amateur footage won the audience awards; at the Achtung Berlin festival, it received the awards for Best Screenplay (Hoffmann) and Best Actor (Hadi Khanjanpour). The German theatrical release was in December 2022.