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A strict boss doesn’t like selfies
Cannes Film Festival: Who is the man at the top of the red stairs?
Well known as Dieter Kosslick as Berlinale’s manager in Germany and Thierry Frémaux as Cannes boss all the time in France. There is hardly a French medium that has not yet published his portrait. Except that Frémaux is not a cute teddy bear, but an intelligent Frenchman with a strong instinct for power.
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The week-and-a-half Frémaux, born in 1960, will once again stand at the top of the red stairs in front of the Festival Hall and receive stars from Tilda Swinton to Tom Cruise. Some on the screens around the world may ask themselves: who is that skinny man in a tuxedo with almost square glasses who talks so familiarly to movie celebrities and seems to be directing here in the background?
Photo-crazy first-person shooters
Frémaux should also make sure his guests don’t overuse their phones (hardly to be feared with Swinton, but more so with Cruise). A few years ago, Frémaux introduced a ban on personalities on the red carpet, saying, “Cannes is for you to see, not to see them. to cinemas.
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For insurance, he was barely lynched on social media. Criticism, however, seems to diminish his hilarious behavior, even when he is reprimanded for choosing a program that is still dominated by men today. At an opening press conference in Cannes earlier this year, he quickly turned around: “Should we reject a good film just because it was made by a man?
But he also sees the growth of younger female directors and wants to open up new avenues for them. He can now seize the opportunity: in the 75th edition, he says he wants to focus more on the difficult future of cinema than on the glorious past.
Black judo belt
By the way, Frémaux is also armed against attacks: he calls his black judo belt his own. Last year, he wrote a book about sports called Judoka (Kosslick once wrote about rolls). “Judo has taught me devotion – including cinema,” says Frémaux.
He is primarily responsible for developing the program. He travels the world from festival to festival and watches movies, certainly in four-digit numbers a year. Its main goal is to keep Cannes at the top of the international festival stage. The real competition comes mainly from Italy: in September, Venice caught up with the start of the Oscar nominees.
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Cannes has stricter rules than Lido: Frémaux has opposed Netflix like no other festival director. As long as the streaming platform does not regularly show its films in (French) cinemas, Netflix will not compete with it. Venice has not bothered with such subtleties for a long time. But Frémaux is also aware that the film is undergoing a fundamental change, if only because of the many viewing platforms.
He doesn’t consider himself a purist: “I prefer a good commercial film to a bad original film,” he said. The film heritage is especially close to his heart. The horse of interest is the series “Classic of Cannes” with a restored classic of cinema.
In Cannes, the art of cinema is revered almost religiously: Frémaux is something like a strict high priest in a cinema church.
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