#Books-On-Film: Niki Théron, International Projects Frankfurt Book Fair

In the last years, our Film Focus Day has been a fantastic possibility to connect with film industry people from all over the world. We have welcomed many actors, directors, screen writers, agents etc. coming together for informative panel discussions, receptions, talks, presentations and of course the Frankfurter Buchmesse Film Award and the BEN Awards by one of our partners: B3, the Biennial of the Moving Image (previous BEN have gone to German performance artist Anne Imhof and actor Willem Dafoe).
Unfortunately, we have to do without this day and the award this year as many film professionals are unable to travel due to coronavirus restrictions. Of course, film as a topic remains at the core of our activities in the international creative industry – online and on site:
We’re having a cinema in our THE ARTS+ area, our partners Telefilm Canada and Quebec's cultural enterprise development organization SODEC will be there in person and will show among others an interactive art installation for the public space inspired by Québec literature. The B3 program will also focus on film. In addition, our partner the Berlinale is going to host matchmaking for producers and publishers online. So despite the difficult circumstances, there is a lot to experience this year.
For me, that means days full of meetings and quite a tight agenda, but what I enjoy most is the serendipity outside the schedule and all the great encounters you can have in Frankfurt without planning them.

Part of your portfolio are the myriad of cross-media manifestations within the digital media arts arena. What’s the most exciting chapter for you right now --or the next frontier-- when it comes to translating stories from one format to another?
For me, our book-to-film activities remain the most exciting. It's so great to see the magic that happens when film professionals connect with the book and its author and want to tell the story on the big screen. My goal is to build up our book-to-film activities, strengthen the relationship with our cooperation partners in Germany and abroad (for example with SCELF, the French-speaking publishers association, in Cannes) and create new formats together, such as the very popular Frankfurter Buchmesse x Berlinale Co-Production Market, an online matchmaking session for international publishers, agencies and film producers. I am really excited to see all this finally happening in person again in Frankfurt because nothing compares to that real exchange -- while digital formats allowed us to enhance the accessibility and thus diversity of such events during the pandemic.

Looking ahead to the Berlinale 2022, in a nutshell: What’s the Frankfurt Book Fair’s place at the Berlinale and what’s your role this coming February?
In 2005, Frankfurter Buchmesse and the Berlinale jointly founded Books at Berlinale. Since then, more than 100 publishers and literary agencies have submitted their titles for this pitching session every year. A wide variety of films and series have been adapted from the books presented there. Among others, we were very happy about the film "The Weekend," based on Bernhard Schlink’s novel and "Naked Under Wolves," based on Bruno Apitz’s novel. Other highlights for me were "The Have-Nots," based on Katharina Hacker’s novel, and "The Cook," adapted from the novel by Martin Suter. A good example for a successful series is "West of Liberty," a German-Swedish co-production based on the novel by Thomas Engström. Currently, we are looking forward to a new series based on Maja Lunde's "The History of Bees" as well as the film based on Jasmin Schreiber's debut novel "Mariana Trench;" both projects are in production as we speak.

I will be part of the Books at Berlinale jury for the first time in 2021/2022 and am very much looking forward to discovering the next great stories with on-screen potential from all over the world.

Most memorable film pitch you’ve been in the room for:
I will never forget the pitch by Ali Arabzadeh from Blue Circle Agency (Iran) at the Film Focus Day at Frankfurter Buchmesse 2019. I had never heard of the agency before, and Iran as a country is not represented often in this kind of format. Ali was perfectly prepared and his enthusiasm was infectious. We arranged a meeting right after the pitching session, and the next year Ali applied for the Frankfurt Fellowship programme and was selected as one of the Fellows 2020/2021 – this is the power of good storytelling!

Right after the Frankfurt Book Fair I will …:
I was lucky enough to prepare the Frankfurter Buchmesse Creative Trip to South East Asia with our VP Claudia Kaiser, who runs our office in Jakarta. The trip is a cross-media project for, among others, film professionals. German production companies Razor Films and Perennial Lens will take part. It was supposed to take place right after this year’s fair. Unfortunately, we had to postpone the trip to next year because of the pandemic situation in the SEA region, but this is the kind of exciting project I am really thrilled to be involved in.

I am also in charge of our Guest of Honour participation in Thessaloniki, Greece, at the end of November and have just returned from there. The bestseller The School of Magical Animals by one of our guest authors, Margit Auer, will have its release there later this month. I am curious to see how the story travels – from German into Greek, and from words into images.

Your favourite Canadian book, film or book-on-film or book you would like to see on film next:
One of my favourite Canadian books of the last months has been The Bad Mother / La mauvaise mère by Marguerite Andersen. This story is such a strong, funny, cruel, and absolutely not politically correct book. I was really touched by her autobiographical novel and would love to see its adaptation on the big screen.

interview by @JuttaBrendemuhl

image: © idüll / Ulrich Diezel