Thierry Frémaux

Thierry Frémaux (; born 29 May 1960) is the director of the Institut Lumière, of the Lumière Film Festival and of the Cannes Film Festival.

Education and career Frémaux was born in Tullins, Isère. After a stint in Paris, the Frémaux family returned to southeastern France around 1970, settling in the Lyonnais suburb of Caluire-et-Cuire before moving to Les Minguettes in Vénissieux. Frémaux's father, an EDF engineer and a staunch leftist with connections to the Unified Socialist Party (PSU), deliberately chose to settle the family in the working-class district.

Frémaux was introduced to cinema at a young age by his father, who ran a film club. While studying social history at University Lyon 2, he co-founded the community radio station Radio Canut and worked as a judo instructor. He obtained his diplôme d'études approfondies with a thesis on the early history of the film magazine Positif.

In 1982, Frémaux began volunteering for the fledgling Institut Lumière after approaching its president, filmmaker Bertrand Tavernier, and became a formal employee a year later.

In 2009, Frémaux launched a new festival, the Lumière Festival, organised by the Institut Lumière.

In 2017, Frémaux directed the feature film Lumière! l'aventure commence, a collection of restored early films by Auguste and Louis Lumière.