Thierry Fremaux: “Cinema remains an act of human presence”

Thierry Frémaux always returns to Buenos Aires with surprising energy: after almost twenty-five years as artistic director of the Cannes Festival, he still retains the same cinematic devotion as that young man who spent the whole afternoon in French theatres, discovering the classics without thinking that one day he would guard the largest Lumiere archive and lead the most influential festival in the world. Today, amid expanding platforms, shifting circuits, and increasingly fragmented global conversations, Fremaux insists that the shared darkness of the room remains irreplaceable. Today concludes the new Cannes Film Week in Buenos Aires, talking about the future, memory, the defense of cinema as a cultural work and, above all, the experience that only the big screen can produce when the film seems to think with us. Fremaux is a person who has a very important and decisive aspect of today’s cinema: he is able to avoid the prevailing pessimism, maximum hype like “death of cinema” and move forward, always attentive to the pulse of cinema, always understanding the importance of caring and also proving that being a film festival director means understanding the world, not resisting it. To regain confidence in cinema is to talk to Thierry Frémaux, and understand that his gigantic lead roles do not benefit from his passion: they are not possible without it directly.

– Why do you think that in this changing moment, interest in the historical heritage of cinema has become more important than ever?

– Because memory is the only way to think about the future. When I was young, a passion for cinema was not a topic of public conversation: it was a popular, intimate passion, something one cultivated almost as an escape. There was a huge distance between watching a classic film and watching a contemporary film; They belonged to different worlds. Today this separation has disappeared. I look at a young spectator going from Panahi to Murnau without feeling like he’s changing the universe, and that’s wonderful. Cinema began to behave like other arts: to no one’s surprise, a theater company was programming Shakespeare alongside a play written this year. The same thing happens with cinema. There are 130 years of images that not only tell us about the past, but fuel the creative courage of today. Quentin Tarantino or Paul Thomas Anderson say it bluntly: their sensitivity comes from looking back. This shows that anyone – not just the director – can become a cinephile. It is not a cultural elite: it is a way to communicate with the world. In this sense, preserving heritage also means preserving the possibility for new generations, even those who grow up in front of Tik Tok, to discover that what we call today “audio-visual language” was invented by cinema.

– You talk a lot about not separating cinema from the physical space in which it is shown. Why do you think it is necessary to defend rooms in light of the rise of platforms?

—Because the chambers are part of the original invention. When the Lumière brothers imagined their machine, they also imagined a space in which that image should be shared. Today we seem to talk about cinema as if it were a disembodied digital file, something that exists equally on the TV, phone or living room. It’s not like that. Watching del Toro’s Frankenstein alone at home is nothing like feeling the breath of the room accompany the film. The platforms are extraordinary: I own them all, I use them, I admire their work, and many of them make admirable efforts to preserve the classics. But the platform is a service. The room is an event. It’s like comparing eating at a restaurant to ordering pizza. The pizza may be excellent, but the restaurant offers a world, an atmosphere, and a small, ephemeral community that takes shape during those two hours. That experience has a soul, and one comes out of it differently. I always say that when I was a student, if I had an aimless day, I just had to walk into the room so the day would make sense. Watching a movie was work. And group work. Platforms will grow – and they must grow – but cinema in theaters is fragile, vulnerable, and needs to be defended. No one would ever agree to close museums because they have art books; Likewise, we can’t give up on theaters because of streaming.

-You’re talking about a kind of “intimate transformation” that happens when we watch a movie in the theater. What do you think happens there that doesn’t happen in other forms?

-There is something physical, almost biological. The big screen generates a scope that does not ask for permission to exist: it envelops us, forces us to focus, and reminds us that we are experiencing something imposed on us from the outside. It is a relationship between images and our minds that changes intensity depending on the space. Then there is the collective command: shared silence is an astonishing phenomenon. I see him in Cannes every year. There are movies that will not have the same effect in computer isolation. But in a room with a thousand people breathing, feeling anxious, or laughing at the same time, something is enhanced. It’s not romanticism: it’s anthropology. Cinema was born as a social ritual. The beautiful thing is that even though everything in the world seems individually directed, these rituals are still effective. Sometimes I’m asked why we keep defending collective expertise if technology is going in another direction. The answer is simple: because we still need to be together, even if we don’t admit it. Film in the theater forces us to coexist, to negotiate silence, and to share feelings that we cannot stop. There is also beauty in this vulnerability.

– In this scenario in which platforms, series and networks produce images without stopping, what have you discovered in cinema that you did not suspect when you started?

-I discovered that cinema is stronger than its industry. When I was young, I thought cinema was tied to a system: studios, directors, cinemas, premieres. Today I see cinema as a way of thinking and experiencing the world. The stories we watch on Instagram, the way family trips are filmed, the languages ​​of soap operas or even everyday videos: all of this is based on rules invented by cinema. The world watches and narrates like a movie theater. This cultural victory is impressive, even though we sometimes don’t realize it. But I also discovered something more intimate: that my work—whether restoring Lumière or directing Cannes—taught me to listen to films. Don’t analyze them: listen to them. There are films that revealed things to me that I understood thanks to full presence, thanks to that energy that is produced between the audience and the screen. This cannot be reproduced anywhere else. In short, cinema continues to be an act of human presence.