Thierry Frémaux, director of the Cannes Film Festival and the Lumière Institute, will receive a Giraldillo de Honor at the 23rd Seville European Film Festival. The event will be held from November 6 to 14 and awards the distinction each year to figures whose careers have made a significant contribution to European cinema.
Frémaux joins Agnieszka Holland and Cartoon Saloon, whose honorary Giraldillos had already been announced. His work across major film institutions has supported contemporary cinema while also promoting the preservation, study and dissemination of film heritage.
Appointed artistic delegate of the Cannes Film Festival in 2000, Frémaux founded Cannes Classics in 2004. The section focuses on recovering and presenting restored films, documentaries and works that connect cinema’s past with its present. He has led the festival since 2007 and has consistently defended theatrical exhibition and the shared experience of watching films on the big screen.
Frémaux has also spent much of his career at the Lumière Institute in Lyon. He began there as a volunteer in 1982 before becoming a programmer and, later, artistic director in 1993 alongside filmmaker Bertrand Tavernier. Together, they organized the centenary of cinema in Lyon in 1995 and launched a film-book collection with publisher Actes Sud, which now includes around 40 titles.
At the Lumière Institute, Frémaux helped establish the Lumière Festival in 2009, an event devoted to classic cinema, as well as the Lumière Award, which recognizes a film personality for their body of work. In 2013, he created the Classic Film Market, described as the first professional market dedicated to classic cinema.
His interest in the work of cinematograph pioneers Auguste and Louis Lumière has also led him to promote the restoration of hundreds of their films. He directed the documentaries “Lumière! The Adventure Begins” and “Lumière, the Adventure Continues,” released in 2025, and was behind the “Lumière! Le cinéma inventé” exhibition presented at Paris’s Grand Palais in 2015.
Among other distinctions, Frémaux is an Officer of the Legion of Honor and a Commander of France’s Order of Arts and Letters. The Seville festival is honoring his preservation and promotion of film heritage, his contribution to the international profile of European cinema and his defense of cinemas as essential cultural spaces.
Sources: La Vanguardia.