The film promotion organization Kuratorium junger deutscher Film, based in Biebrich Castle, was founded in 1965 as a registered association and converted into a public foundation under civil law in 1982.

The institution was created in the wake of the spirit of optimism following the so-called Oberhausen Manifesto. In 1962, a group of young directors declared "grandpa's cinema" to be "dead" and called for new content and presentation methods for film. "Farewell to Yesterday", Alexander Kluge's cinema debut, was the first film supported by the curatorship in 1965.

The list of now successful filmmakers who made their first film thanks to the support of the Board of Trustees ranges from "A" for Achternbusch to Detlef Buck, Doris Dörrie, Roland Emmerich, Werner Herzog, Edgar Reitz and Tom Tykwer to "W" for Wim Wenders, to name but a few. But more recent films such as "Schultze gets the blues" or the award-winning children's films "Die Blindgänger" and "Es ist ein Elch entsprungen" were also made possible with the support of the Board of Trustees, as was the children's film "Krabat", which was jointly funded by the Federal Ministry of Culture and the Media (BKM) and the Board of Trustees.

The Foundation is the only film funding institution jointly supported by the federal states. It is based on the administrative agreement of May 18, 1982, in which the federal states committed themselves to joint funding. In 1992, the five new federal states joined the administrative agreement.

The statutory task of the Board of Trustees is to promote young film artists and to contribute to and stimulate the artistic development of German film. The new concept of the Board of Trustees, with which it resumed its work after a restructuring phase in 1998, places clear emphasis on the promotion of children's films and talent films. Since 2005, the foundation has been working closely with the BKM in the area of children's and youth films.

The continuing increase in the number of funding applications shows the lasting importance and necessity of transnational, location-independent cultural film funding, as guaranteed by the Kuratorium junger deutscher Film.

The Board of Trustees celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2015.