Biography
Henning Beckhoff, born in 1991 in Ennepetal in the Ruhr region, initially gained experience as an actor at the Junge Bühne Lutz in Hagen. In 2012, he began studying directing at the Film University Babelsberg 'Konrad Wolf', which he completed in 2018. During his studies, he directed his feature film debut, the coming-of-age story "Fünf Dinge, die ich nicht verstehe" ("Things I Don't Get"). The film received a Special Mention at the Hof Film Festival and won awards for Best Costume Design and Best Production Design; at the 2018 Poitiers Film Festival and the 2019 Achtung Berlin Festival, it won Best Production. The reviews for the German theatrical release in November 2019 were also very positive.
Beckhoff's medium-length graduation film, the relationship drama "Off Season", premiered at the 2019 Berlinale in the Perspektive Deutsches Kino section. At the First Steps Awards, cinematographer Sabine Panossian received the Michael Ballhaus Prize, while the film itself won the Audience Award at the Filmz festival in Mainz. Also in 2019, Beckhoff received a grant from the Wim Wenders Foundation and the Film- und Medienstiftung NRW, although the film project, a stalking thriller filmed from a GoPro perspective, was ultimately not realized. In 2020, Henning Beckhoff was a participant in the Berlinale Talents and received a residency at the Cannes Film Festival in Paris.
In spring 2022, Beckhoff began shooting his second feature-length film: "Fossil", a milieu and character study about an open-cast mine worker who cannot accept the impending coal phase-out. Before the premiere of this film, Beckhoff was invited by the Goethe Institute for a three-month fellowship at Villa Kamogawa in Osaka, Japan, in the fall of 2022, where he worked on a father-daughter story set in Japan.
The world premiere of "Fossil" took place at the Munich Film Festival 2023, where the film received the FIPRESCI Award. The regular theatrical release took place in June 2024.