The 60th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (KVIFF) hosted the inaugural "Book-to-Screen at KVIFF" showcase as part of its expanded Industry Days programme, presenting Central and Eastern European literary works considered ripe for film or television adaptation. The event matters as an attempt to build a dedicated regional market for adaptation rights, with programme head Hugo Rosák stating the ambition to become "a true Central-Eastern European IP market" that fosters dialogue between the film and publishing industries and creates greater transparency around adaptation rights.

Eight original literary properties were pitched at the spa town's Imperial Spa, spanning the region's past, present and future. Among them was the title work, *Cupid at the Kremlin Wall* by Georgian historian Aka Morchiladze, a historical drama and detective novel set during a train journey amid 1930s Stalinist terror and featuring real filmmakers such as Sergei Eisenstein. Other pitches included the Czech folk-horror thriller *Playing Wolf* by Zuzana Ríhová, the Polish children's book *The River Odyssey of Kora from Willow Meadow* by Adam Robiński about a young beaver, and *Queen of Hearts*, a dystopian post-Communist satire by Moldovan author Iulian Ciocan set in a Chișinău being swallowed by a crater.