(Variety October 22) Thierry Fremaux isn’t going anywhere. But if the man who has steered the Cannes Film Festival for the past decade were to step down tomorrow, at least two things are certain: He’d be going out on a high note, and he’d have plenty to keep him busy.

Festival Director - Fremaux

At 51, the Lyon native continues to head his hometown’s Institut Lumiere (alongside helmer Bertrand Tavernier), a film museum located in the birthplace of the cinema. In that capacity, he just wrapped a popular second edition of his Festival Lumiere, a cinephile buffet devoted to classics and retro-spectives — as well as an implicit retort to those who questioned his decision to stay in Lyon when he took the Cannes reins in 2001.

These days, few would dispute Fremaux’s ability to multitask. (He shows up for his sit-down with Variety on his Trek bicycle, and admits he often negotiates film deals by phone while riding through the streets of Lyon and Paris.) Similarly, few would dispute his talent for making unpopular choices that pay off down the line.

Since his first day as artistic director at the grande dame of international cinema events, Fremaux has been conscious of his place as a leading force in the ongoing evolution of film festivals as a species. He’s fulfilled that role by embracing new technologies while remaining an advocate for the bigscreen experience, welcoming genre fare as well as traditional art cinema and generally refusing to settle on any simple definition of a festival film.

Fremaux's Traditional Red Carpet Welcome.

As he prepares to set the table for Cannes’ 65th anniversary in 2012, he’s still basking in warm notices for his most recent selection — a program that seemed emblematic of his largely acclaimed, sometimes controversial tenure, while effectively realizing almost everything he set out to accomplish 10 years ago.

“In a way, last year was my first real year,” Fremaux tells Variety. “Over the last five years I’ve had more freedom, but last year I had the most, the best freedom I could have had.”

Largely absent was the tension between old and new that has occasionally dogged his selection: Here was a festival boasting career-highlight work from heavyweight auteurs like Aki Kaurismaki and Nuri Bilge Ceylan, programmed alongside down-and-dirty genre fare like Nicolas Winding Refn’s “Drive.” Here, too, was a festival reasserting its ability to command media attention like no other, serving up its juiciest, ugliest scandale in years courtesy of Lars von Trier.

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Article written by Justin Chang