My first Cannes. - ‘This is where people come together who love and celebrate their industry and the product of film in all its facets’

Jenny Kühne is responsible for Rights & Licensing at Frankfurter Buchmesse which also includes the book-to-screen activities. Film-makers around the world are on the lookout for unusual book material and the major international film festivals in particular are a magnet for producers, literary agents, publishers and many others to discuss new film ideas based on books. Since 2014, Frankfurter Buchmesse has been cooperating with SCELF (Société civile des éditeurs de langue française) as part of the Cannes International Film Festival and supports the rights trade through book pitchings and networking events. Jenny Kühne was in Cannes for the first time and shares her experiences with us.

I regularly warn people who have not yet been to Frankfurter Buchmesse how big, how diverse, how overwhelming the fair can be at the beginning - and yet stumble somewhat naively into one of the largest and most important film festivals in the world. And I am, of course, overwhelmed. In terms of size, the business part of the festival, the Marché du Film, can't compete with ‘my’ fair, but the setting is unique: in the ‘Village International’, where country stands, similar to the national stands at the book fair, present their film (promotion) landscape, you sit in or in front of white pavilions directly on the beach and do business - and I think a beach and palm trees like that would also look good in Frankfurt. But it's not like that everywhere and inside the Palais du Festival, between the ‘normal’ exhibition stands, it feels much more familiar to me. 

Apart from the external circumstances, Cannes is not so different from Frankfurter Buchmesse: people come together here who love and celebrate their industry and the product of film in all its facets; the enthusiasm is palpable in all conversations, even in the toilet queue there is lively debate about the latest projects and ideas ... just like in Frankfurt.

What I'm particularly pleased about is that it's very clear that Frankfurter Buchmesse's long-standing efforts to network the film and book industries (and the games industry) more closely are bearing fruit. Not only did the pitching event ‘Shoot the Book!’, in which we are a partner, attract many international producers, but above all the name Frankfurter Buchmesse met with interest everywhere. I heard more than once: Oh, yes, Frankfurt, I really want to go there! The fact that good stories are the nucleus of both industries and how much potential literary adaptations offer can no longer be ignored, at least since the emergence of the various streaming services, and quite a few national festivals now have book pitching or matchmaking formats on their programmes. What is unique about the Frankfurt Book Fair's Book-to-Screen Day (on 17 October 2025; more information) is that the film industry will be joining us here. True to our motto: Only at Frankfurter Buchmesse.