Born and raised in the city of Haarlem, filmmaking was early in his life; by bringing a video camera to high school he wanted to capture moments and portray individuals, by making videos with his siblings or friends he wanted to entertain. He discovered all stages of film production during a project for his higher education in journalism at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, which made him realize that this art would become both his passion as well as his profession.
When a Haarlem cinema from 1915 was about to close, Van ’t Hoff got inspired to make his first short film: ‘Cinema Palace’ (2011). In the same year, he started his 6-month internship as a cinematographer at the Royal Theatre Carré in Amsterdam for a television show about artists. Starting to work as a freelance filmmaker after his internship, he remained active at the theatre for two more years while continuing to produce short films such as the award-winning ‘Ruysdael’ (2012) — developing himself both artistically and commercially.
‘Truth & Privacy in the National Archives of the Netherlands’ (2015), Van ’t Hoff’s first documentary film with which he graduated from his university, concerns relatives of Holocaust victims and their search for truth in World War II files; it was broadcast on Dutch television and was screened in the Netherlands and Israel. Since then, he decided to focus more on his artistic side: his short films ‘A Divided Whole’ (2018), ‘Accelerate’ (2018) and ‘The Path of the Greys’ (2018) were completed in the same year and would be screened, nominated and awarded at international film festivals; two years later, he completed his documentary films ‘Focus on Belarus’ (2020) and ‘Complete Portrait Wanted of Markéta Ledererová’ (2020).