Thierry Frémaux spent his first Cannes Film Festival in 1979 sleeping in his van and scrounging tickets. Now he runs the show. He tells MICHAEL DWYERabout the pains and pleasures of programming the world's most prestigious film event

Thierry Frémaux first came to the Festival de Cannes in 1979. He was 18, had just acquired his driving licence and travelled by van from his home in Lyon with a few friends. “We had no money, so we slept in the van at a gas station off the highway outside Cannes,” he recalls. “I didn’t know how to get tickets for anything. I was one of those people you see begging for tickets outside the Festival Palais at eight o’clock every morning, but I was a movie buff and I felt I had to be there. I knew that cinema was going to be my life.”

When he started as a volunteer at the Institute Lumière in Lyon, which he now runs, he secured an industry pass at Cannes, but it was “a bad accreditation”, he says, referring to the festival’s multi-tiered, colour-coded admission levels. “Everyone wants a better accreditation than what they get. If they get blue, they want pink, and so on. That’s part of the aristocratic system of Cannes. I went through all the categories of accreditation, from the proletariat to the aristocracy, now that I manage the festival.”

From sleeping in a van, Frémaux has moved to the suite reserved for the festival director at the elegant five-star Carlton hotel on the Croisette at Cannes. His official title is delegate-general and he became just the fourth person to hold that position when he was promoted from artistic director two years ago. As a festival staff member commented then: “He was the disciple, now he’s the master.”

When he was approached to work on the Cannes festival, Frémaux was content to be in charge of the Institute Lumière in Lyon, “the birthplace of cinema”, as he puts it, because it was there that brothers August and Louis Lumière made the first ever films in 1895. The institute, which has celebrated director and Lyon native Bertrand Tavernier as its president, contains a museum, a library and a cinema that shows classic films throughout the year.

In 2000, Frémaux was invited to work at the Cinémathèque Française in Paris, but he refused because he wanted to stay in Lyon. Soon afterwards, Gilles Jacob, then the delegate-general of Cannes, asked him to join the core festival team. He says his response was, “As I just refused to go with the brunette, I can’t go with the blonde, even if the blonde is beautiful.” Jacob persisted and told Frémaux that he could become the artistic director of Cannes and keep his job in Lyon.

That was the best of both worlds for a cineaste whose passion for film is evident throughout this conversation. “It suited me because Cannes is a big machine and I could have been a failure there, not because of Cannes but because of me,” he says. “Gilles was the best teacher I could have had. And I still live in Lyon with my wife and my two children, who are four and six, but only on weekends between December and April, when I’m in Paris, which is only two hours away. My wife is very understanding.

“I’m glad I kept my position in Lyon because you could go crazy with Cannes. When people call you, it’s never to ask about your health but because they want their film in the festival. For six months, you are one of the most wanted men in the world and then on the morning after the festival ends, the phone stops ringing.” The pressure kicks into overdrive during the 12 days of the festival itself every May. “It’s exhausting,” says Frémaux, “but you have to pay attention to your physical condition. Everyone has their own strategy for dealing with it. I don’t drink alcohol or coffee during the festival. I sleep for five or six hours every night and that’s enough, but you have to listen to your own body.”

Cannes during the festival is “a world village to celebrate the art of film and to put new filmmakers on the map”, he says. “It connects art and industry, and that’s a balance we have to manage every year. There are over 1,000 films in the market at the festival every year, but only 50 movies are invited in the official selection and just 20 of them are in competition. From breakfast to the last drink at night, everyone is talking about films.”

After all his years at Cannes, Frémaux still finds his enthusiasm fuelled by the sight of more than 2,000 international journalists converging on the Festival Palais for the daily 8.30am press screening. By night, the same venue is the scene for the black-tie gala screenings at which Frémaux and Jacob greet the directors and actors as they ascend the red-carpeted steps, flanked by gendarmes on both sides and surrounded by photographers, who are also obliged to wear tenue de soirée.

“I enjoy that ritual,” Frémaux says. “It is very democratic. Every film in competition gets the same treatment, whether it’s a big Hollywood or European film or a small film from Singapore or Mexico. When it works, it’s wonderful. When it doesn’t work, a film can be killed by just one screening in Cannes because of what journalists write about it.

“The gala screenings in Cannes used be considered very snobbish and cold, but that’s not the case anymore. Now it’s the press screenings which are cold. A lot of your colleagues may love a film but they don’t want to show it at the screening.”

Filmmakers are understandably nervous about showing their films for the first time in such a blaze of publicity. “I remember one director who would not let go of my hand,” Frémaux says. “He was so lost with all this pressure.”

The worst part of his job, he says, is when it comes to turning down movies from directors he knows or admires. “So many films are submitted every year, but Gilles Jacob gave me very good advice when he told me not to worry because the director will have a new film in two years.”

Mike Leigh, who won the Palme d'Or for Secrets and Liesin 1996, didn't conceal his anger when his abortion drama Vera Drakewas not selected in 2004. Four months later it won the top prize at the Venice festival. Accepting his trophy, Leigh sarcastically thanked Cannes for refusing his film and making the Venice award possible. Frémaux was in the Venice audience that night.

“I wanted to stand up and say ‘I’m the bad guy’,” he says. “Maybe it was a mistake for me to turn down his movie, but every year the critics are saying we always choose the same directors. My response is always the same. Great directors make great films and some of them were unknown when they first came to Cannes. And cinema is always about choices and disappointments, from the very beginning of a film when a producer chooses a director and the director chooses the actors.”

Cannes 2009: Bright Star, Inglourious Basterds and more   

The 62nd Festival de Cannes begins next Wednesday with the world premiere of Disney's Up, the first animated feature and the first 3D movie selected for opening night at the festival.

"Cannes has demonstrated for many years its interest in animation by selecting films from Dreamworks, as well as films that use animation differently, such as Persepolisand Waltz With Bashir," says Thierry Frémaux. "It's audacious to open the festival with an animated film, but we're conscious of our duty. It's by stretching its boundaries that cinema remains universal."

More than 1,670 feature films were submitted for this year's festival, from which just 20 have been chosen to compete for the coveted Palme d'Or, and the selection is awash with international auteurs, many of them Cannes veterans.

Frémaux has dedicated the programme to Wouter Barendrecht, the enterprising producer and co-founder of Fortissimo Films, who died last month at the age of 43.

In an innovation this year, the festival plans to post the first five minutes of all filmsin the official selection on the festival's website, www.festival-cannes.com.

The enticingly diverse competition line-up includes Ang Lee's Taking Woodstock, Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds, Ken Loach's Looking for Eric, Michael Haneke's The White Tape, Jane Campion's Bright Star, Pedro Alomodóvar's Broken Embraces, Park Chan-wook's Thirstand Lars von Trier's Antichrist.

Frémaux says he feels he has been spoiled. "It's as if every great director phoned every other great filmmaker and said: 'Let's make sure we're ready for Cannes.' In competition, we have some of the world's most famous and greatest auteurs, but some of their films are more mainstream and open than could be thought. There are no limits, no borders. Look at Tarantino, a pure American making his latest film in Germany and in France."

Frémaux is acutely conscious of the challenges involved in presenting such a glitzy, high-profile festival during the depths of a global recession. "We have to have a film festival that pays attention to the crisis in the world.

"We don't control the hotels and restaurants in Cannes, but we've asked them to consider the situation because Cannes is expensive. The festival itself isn't directly affected by the crisis, but that doesn't mean that we live outside of the world. Of course, we are conscious that the crisis is there. At the Festival de Cannes we like to think that cinema can change the world."

The Festival de Cannes takes place from May 13th to 24th

Film Correspondent Michael Dwyer will be in Cannes from Tuesday next. Read his reports in next Friday's Ticketand in the daily News and Arts pages of The Irish Times