Biography

Credits his father, an electric engineer, for introducing him to cinema.

Co-founded Radio Canut in 1977.

Graduated in Contemporary History from Lumière University Lyon 2, owing his master degree to a thesis on the origins of the Positivism.

Declined the offer of becoming director of the 'Cinémathèque Française' in 1999.

He has a black belt in judo and taught the discipline himself.

To be selected at Cannes is a privilege and it must remain so. But the world is changing and Cannes must ask all the questions that will be asked at the biggest festival in the world. The great museums show the great painters. Cannes shows the great filmmakers. Today, everything is more difficult, less relaxed, with more limited financial and economic issues. Gone is the time when Fellini and Mastroianni were walking freely on the Croisette. [2014]

I was very fortunate to have Guillermo's Pan's Labyrinth (2006) in competition at Cannes [in 2006]. For me, it was very important to have not only a very good film but a genre movie. It was a way of allowing genre cinema into Cannes competition where it was very difficult to have cinema like this. (...) Like other genre directors Guillermo del Toro is great in mise-en-scène [composition, design, sets, actors' movements] and a poet of monstrosity, a son of the 1920s, 1930s, of F.W. Murnau, of a very important tradition in cinema. [2015]

[on the lack of female directors at Cannes] We have 20% (women filmmakers). In world cinema, only 7% are women according to a study conducted by UNESCO - and we have 20%. [2016]

There's something organic in a selection of 50 films that reflect the entirety of cinema: The young, the old, men, women, Westerners, Asians, Latinos, radical forms and classic ones. All of that constitutes a package in which you can find everything. I think it's important that Cannes continues to be a platform where we show personal auteurs who have their own touch, who experiment and play with the form of cinema, but it's also important to show that classic forms matter as well. [2016]

[if he would include a TV selection at Cannes] We've shown TV before: Olivier Assayas' Carlos (2010). But we'll always favor [theatrical] films. When Steven Soderbergh and Olivier Assayas, who are auteurs, work on TV formats, we're obviously interested but beyond that we're not going to create a dedicated TV section. [2016]