Showtime on the red carpet: Diana Iljine and Christoph Gröner at the opening of the 2022 film festival. ©
Diana Iljine will leave the Munich Film Festival on October 1, 2023, and Christoph Gröner, Artistic Director of the festival, will be responsible for the film festival in 2024 and 2025. After that, the position is advertised.
This farewell is no surprise. It was not easy for her, Diana Iljine said in a press release on Wednesday evening (May 10, 2023). But when she took office as head of the Munich Film Festival in 2011, she had already made it clear that she did not consider the job to be a job for eternity. Now she is leaving the festival after its 40th edition in the summer, officially on October 1, 2023.
The 40th Munich Film Festival will take place from June 23 to July 1, 2023
"Exhausting" is part of every description of a management position. However, one can confidently assume that this is particularly true at the International Munich Film Weeks GmbH, which is behind the film festival. There are the shareholders – the state capital, the Free State, Bayerischer Rundfunk, the umbrella organisation of the film industry – who have their demands on the boss. There is the audience that wants to be ensnared – and that after the pandemic it is probably even more difficult to get up from the sofa to go to the cinema than before Corona. And there's a section of the media public and politicians who crave celebrities and would like to see the film festival catch up with the Berlinale, Germany's only A-festival. At least.
So it's a task in the field of tension of many different positions – and with a budget that is far removed from the first league. Christoph Gröner knows this like the back of his hand. He has been working at the film festival for almost 20 years, starting here as an intern in 2004. He has written about films and film people, curated, moderated and presented programmes, and established the "New German Cinema" section, one of the most popular and successful of the festival. Four years ago, Diana Iljine appointed him artistic director at her side.
Christoph Gröner to succeed Diana Iljine in autumn 2023
In the fall, he will now succeed his boss in office – at least for the next two years: As reported, the supervisory board of the Munich International Film Week decided on Wednesday evening to transfer the management of the GmbH to Gröner "probably from October 1" for the 2024 and 2025 film festivals. The old newcomer is considered ambitious, well-connected and technically adept in the industry. In addition to Munich, Gröner works for the film festival in Estonia's capital Tallinn, an A-festival, by the way. On the plus side, he can also claim that he knows the Munich company and its protagonists like no other. He knows what a rat's tail of obligations and considerations the task entails – you certainly don't offend him too much when you say that he really wants the job (anyway). Anyone who has ever seen Gröner on stage at a panel discussion or watched his film introductions, which he recorded for the german-French broadcaster Arte, also knows that he can present and feels right at home in front of the camera and in the spotlight. Such a gene for sales and entertainment is an essential part of being at the top of a film festival.
For 2026, the direction of the film festival will then be advertised internationally. At present, it can be assumed that Christoph Gröner is also interested in a sequel. And although the idea seems logical, the future of the popular summer festival for the time after is less fixed than one might think today.
