Welcome to Deadline’s International Disruptors, a feature where we shine a spotlight on key executives and companies outside of the U.S. shaking up the offshore marketplace. This week we’re talking to Zurich Film Festival Director & Co-Owner Reta Guetg about this year’s edition, her evolution at the festival and why she and fellow co-owners want to make it Europe’s trendiest festival.

For someone who works in an industry that is constantly in flux, Zurich Film Festival Co-Owner and Festival Director Reta Guetg is resolute in her ambition for the young film event. Last year, she and ZFF CEO and Co-Owner Christian Jungen led a management buyout of the festival from newspaper publisher NZZ Group and this year the Swiss event is doubling down on a deliberately boutique identity, strengthening its relationship with Hollywood and positioning itself as a launchpad for awards contenders – all while using its industry flagship event, the Zurich Summit, to put emerging issues like AI at the center of the conversation.

“We’re not going to be an A-festival, that’s not our strategy,” Guetg tells Deadline. “We want to have the best films we can and push them to an audience, but also to the industry. We want to put them on the radar and be a relevant launchpad for awards contenders. We can be the perfect second home for a film to get visibility through a cool place like Zurich.”

The 22^nd edition of ZFF kicked off on Thursday night with the European premiere of Mount Everest adventure Tenzing, starring Tom Hiddleston and Willem Dafoe and highlights in this year’s lineup include the European premiere of Peter Farrelly’s I Play Rocky as well as screenings of Naomi Watts starrer The Housewife and Jesse Eisenberg’s The Debut.

Further films set to screen at the 11-day event include Danny Boyle’s Ink, Martin McDonagh’s Wild Horse Nine, Jordan Firstman’s Club Kid, Channing Tatum and Gemma Chan starrer Josephine and Alexander Skarsgård and Olivia Colman rom-com Wicker. Talent in attendance this year include Hiddleston, Watts, McDonagh, Julianne Moore, Richard Linklater and John Turturro, all of whom are set to be feted by the fest.

This weekend sees the return of its annual Zurich Summit, its flagship boutique industry conference that Guetg has been carefully building since she first joined ZFF in 2016. Running September 25-27, the summit is now renowned for attracting top Hollywood and international execs who descend upon the swanky Dolder Grand Hotel for the weekend to discuss current industry trends, issues and financing models. ZFF has dubbed it “the Davos of the film world” in reference to the annual World Economic Forum in the Swiss Alps.

Last year, the event went viral when Tilly Norwood was introduced to the world during a Deadline-moderated panel with her creator Eline van der Velden. After reporting that a number of talent agents were circling the AI actress for representation, the story quickly sparked a global debate and firmly put Zurich at the forefront of the conversation.

“The Tilly Norwood story really showed how Zurich can be relevant,” says Guetg. “We are a platform to launch a discussion for the industry that continued to be a discussion out of Zurich. That was really memorable and I think it was a sign that somehow, after all of these years, we are at the center of these important topics and ideas. It validated all that we have built over these years.”

With wind in its sails, the Zurich Summit is ramping up its efforts this year. Attendees the 2026 event include FilmNation Entertainment CEO Glen Basner (who is receiving the annual Game Changer Award), Backrooms director Kane Parsons, AMPAS CEO Bill Kramer, CAA Media Finance Co-Heads Roeg Sutherland and Sarah Schweitzman, UTA Independent Film Group Partner and Head Rena Ronson, Mediawan Pictures CEO Elisabeth d’Arvieu and Mubi CEO Efe Cakarel. Van der Velden is also returning along with speakers from TikTok and YouTube.

Guetg, who was first in charge of building the industry strand of the fest when she started at ZFF decade ago, points to its strong relationships with Hollywood – notably CAA – who have helped bring speakers to the confab each year. “We’ve had a lot of goodwill and help from Hollywood execs and agencies to help us grow this event – they are our soft power.”

Its success, she says, is also down to its “boutique and bespoke” nature. “It’s one of the rare times, particularly in this busy fall season, where there’s less people,” says Guetg. “It’s very curated and it’s an environment where people really have time to sit down and talk to each other in different surroundings. I think this quality time makes a difference.”

First steps

Guetg’s route into the film business began in Bern in 2000 when she launched short film festival Shnit. “It grew quite quickly into a big thing in our hometown,” she says. “We built it from scratch, and our idea was to just show fun, short films in Bern. We had a very good community of really packed cinemas.”

That festival quickly grew internationally, spanning to multiple cities including Cape Town, Bangkok and Cairo, among others, and Guetg said growing it was “intuitive.”

“I learned so much by doing it and that’s really how I learned how to own my own business and be in charge of everything,” she says. “It was a super great school for me.”

After a decade, Guetg felt it was time to move on and, after some production freelancing gigs, ZFF approached her to head up the festival’s burgeoning industry section.

“Zurich had a similar history in terms that the founders just had an idea and went for it,” she says. “That felt so familiar to me. It was obviously a completely different size but this idea that nobody really waits for you and being a bit of an underdog – because Zurich did things differently to other festivals –, that felt very natural to me.”

ZFF’s next phase

It’s a pivotal time for ZFF now, which is notably entering a new chapter following a management buyout in July 2025. Guetg is one of the festival’s now five owners, alongside well-respected former artistic director Jungen (now ZFF CEO), entrepreneur and TV host Max Loong, longtime ZFF President Felix E. Müller and finance expert Marek Skreta. The move gave Guetg and her fellow owners greater control over the festival’s future after being owned by NZZ Group, publisher of Neue Zürcher Zeitung newspaper, for a decade.

“It happened in July, almost three months before last year’s festival, so there was not much time to think about what it would really mean,” she says. “So, we had to regroup quite quickly after the festival with this new ownership and figure out where we wanted to go.”

The response so far, she says, has been energizing.

“It’s opened up a lot of motivation for all of us, including the team, festival friends or donors that support the festival – everyone liked the idea of having an independent group of people run it rather than a big corporation.”

The priority is to retain what she describes as Zurich’s DNA: an ability to move quickly, experiment and take risks without becoming weighed down by its own scale.

“We need to be so agile, and Zurich has always been quite adaptive, so it was important for us to keep the DNA of the festival.”

She is clear that the ambition is not to scale up to the size of festivals like Cannes or Toronto. Instead, much like its summit, Guetg sees value in Zurich’s comparatively intimate scale. “That’s the idea – to keep it small. We don’t want to grow it into a huge event quantity-wise, that’s not the idea at all. We’re a very guest-friendly and talent-friendly city and we’re known for being good hosts.”

ZFF has increasingly embraced its own position as a slightly unconventional European player. Guetg cites a 2022 Guardian article’s description of Zurich, which said: “If Venice and Cannes are the grandmothers of the European festival scene, ZFF is the trendy teenager.” The phrase, she says, has stuck.

“This has become our vision – to be the trendiest film festival in Europe,” Guetg says. “And I think we’re quite near this.”

She continues: “We’ve been lucky that people have been connecting us with people who are aligned with our vision of what we want Zurich to be. Looking ahead, I think it’s important that we try not to do everything, but we continue to try and get the right people. And also to continue to not be so risk averse, because that is more important than ever.”

The 22^nd Zurich Film Festival runs September 24-October 4, 2026.