Why Christian Jungen and Reta Guetg bought the Zurich Film Festival

The Zurich Film Festival (ZFF) celebrates its 21^st edition this year – and like many 21-year-olds is planning for the future.

It is doing so under new ownership. Earlier this year, festival director Christian Jungen led a management buyout of ZFF from the NZZ Group, publisher of the centre-right Neue Zürcher Zeitung newspaper.

Jungen is one of the festival’s five new owners, alongside vice director Reta Guetg, who has spent a decade overseeing the ZFF’s industry and programming activities; entrepreneur and TV host Max Loong; long-time ZFF president Felix E. Müller; and finance expert Marek Skreta.

Together, they bring significant know-how and contacts to the ZFF. Jungen and Guetg are well-connected within the national and international film community, while Loong has extensive expertise in sponsorships, hospitality, and event marketing. Müller is well-connected in Swiss political and cultural circles, and Skreta is a former senior banker at UBS, now running a family office as chief investment officer.

NZZ had owned the festival for the past 10 years. Jungen, a former NZZ film critic who was appointed ZFF director in December 2019, says his former employer helped to professionalise the festival and was important for securing some sponsors. NZZ itself is staying on for another three years as a main sponsor of the festival.

Independent future

But Jungen believes the festival will be better off now it is independent. “NZZ is a good brand, but not everyone likes it politically,” he explains. “They have strong opinions on everything going on in the world, and sometimes the festival was the collateral damage of people’s opinion of the newspaper. They themselves realised that they are somehow standing in the way of a good development of the festival.” 

Jungen says the impact of the new ownership has been quick to materialise. “Within the first four weeks after the announcement, we won so many sponsors and donors because the old families of Zurich rallied behind the festival. They want to support the festival now that it’s independent.”

He declines to reveal how much he and his co-owners paid to acquire the ZFF, but stresses: “We are five investors, and everyone is invested with their own money. But the good thing is, we are all earthly creatures. Nobody is a billionaire.

“If a billionaire had taken over, every foundation could say, ‘We won’t support you, because he can pay it himself.’ It’s good that we are working-class owners. We need to earn the money we are spending, and that makes it easier to get sponsors’ money, soft money from foundations, and hopefully also more support from the city of Zurich itself.”

Strategic partnerships

The new ownership group’s ambition is to position the ZFF as one of Europe’s leading film festivals through strategic partnerships with other international players.

“We want to build a network with other festivals on other continents to work closely together, to share intelligence, contacts, hopefully for the benefit of all these festivals that are part of the network,” explains Jungen.

He says the inspiration for the plan is his favourite football team, Zurich’s Grasshoppers, which is owned by Los Angeles FC and is part of a talent development network with clubs such as FC Bayern Munich.

“We’re very pragmatic. There are the big five festivals – Cannes, Venice, Toronto, Berlin and Sundance. And all the rest is one league. It is easier if you join forces with some others.”

Such partnerships can help unlock sponsorship opportunities, he says. For example, a large sponsor might get more value by backing a network of festivals rather than a single event. Jungen compares it to sports events such as ATP Tennis, which can offer tournaments on every continent to sponsors. “If your festival is just once a year in the autumn, it might not be enough for sponsors. They want more consistency. If you can go to them and tell them you are a network of five film festivals, you have a better chance [for sponsorship].”

Jungen notes Zurich already “exchanges very openly” with the overlapping San Sebastian Film Festival, and has a good relationship with Kristy Matheson at the BFI London Film Festival.

Of course, each of the festivals will compete with each other for premieres. “But what is our job as film festivals? To help films.”

In this, Zurich is playing to one of its strengths as a key staging post in the awards corridor. ZFF vice director Guetg emphasises that a key role of Zurich is to provide a platform for films that have previously premiered at the ‘big five’ film festivals to help them continue to build momentum during the awards season.

“We have loads of European premieres this year that are coming to Zurich this year,” she says, citing gala screenings for films such as Hedda, California Schemin’, Roofman and H Is For Hawk among many others.

It is clear that Jungen and Guetg have ambitious plans for the future of the festival. But first, of course, there is the small matter of this year’s edition, which runs September 25 to October 5.

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