Lumière’s Descendent: Thierry Frémaux

Cannes’ artistic director

A A A Comments (0) By Scott Foundas Monday, May 14 2007

“The fight today is different from the fight five or 10 years ago, because now it’s impossible to miss a director,” he says. “Today, if you’re a young filmmaker with a good short film, there are already three satellites focused on you. If there is an interesting, first-time Korean filmmaker, everybody knows who he is. There are many more filmmakers, more films to see and more pressure. Cannes is something like the Nobel Prize for cinema. But the Nobel Prize is sometimes given to an unknown Irish poet, or an unknown Turkish novelist.”

The trick, according to FrÃ©maux, is staying grounded. “That’s why going back to Lyon, having a normal life, talking with friends about cinema — it’s very good.”

Frémaux soaks up the sun during a recent Los Angeles visit.

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Once he is rid of me, he will spend the rest of the weekend with his family at their country house on the outskirts of the city, before returning to Paris (and festival-preparation mode) on Monday morning. Yet, as the final countdown to Cannes — and its inevitable torrent of good, bad and ugly publicity — begins, FrÃ©maux seems calm and unruffled, like the confident judoka awaiting his next opponent.

“This job is a collision of the best and the worst,” he says as he downs his last gulp. “You have to do this job sincerely, but without forgetting that you can make mistakes. Then I feel comfortable. I will make a lot of mistakes this year.”For more on Cannes, read Scott Foundas' "Eye of the Storm: Gilles Jacob"

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