Hanno Höfer

Hanno Höfer (born 8 July 1967 in Timișoara, Romania) is a German-Romanian movie director, producer and musician.

When he was about one year old, he moved to Bucharest due to his parents' work (his father was a journalist and his mother worked first for a newspaper and later in television), but when their home was damaged in the 1977 earthquake, he returned to the Banat region where he stayed for 4 years at his grandparents' home. Then he went back to Bucharest to attend the German Lyceum. After graduation, he failed the university entrance examination to study foreign languages in Bucharest, so he worked for a while as a translator in Bucharest and then as an actor at the German Theater in Timișoara. In 1988, he emigrated with his family to Germany.

Between 1990 and 1992 he studied South-Eastern European History and Ethnology in Berlin, then he had a scholarship at the Babeș-Bolyai University in Cluj, and later, between 1994–1998, he studied Movies and Directing at the Academy for Theatre and Film in Bucharest. Here he met Cristian Mungiu, with whom later (and with the cameraman Oleg Mutu) he established the production company "Mobra Films".

He directed a few short movies amongst which Telefon în Străinătate (International Phone Call), Dincolo (on the other side) and Ajutoare umanitare (Humanitarian Aid). Those brought him 3 prizes, at the Munich International Festival of Film Schools, at the Bucharest's CineMAiubit Festival and the grand prize of the Cottbus Film Festival of East European Cinema.