The Tribeca Film Festival's New Artistic Director Made a Career Of Watching Movies

by Noah Davis

The Tribeca Film Festival starts today, and at its helm this year is Frédéric Boyer, who is something of an accidental artistic director. All the Parisian ever wanted to do was watch films. He even skipped his schoolboy exams to screen a flick. That obsession — viewing five, six, seven movies a day — led to a job at Videosphere, the Paris store with over 60,000 titles, which in turn resulted in a gig programming the Directors’ Fortnight in Cannes. Now, he finds himself programming the New York festival. The career path is accidental, perhaps, but he’s hardly unprepared. “It’s the life I choose because I don’t want my work to stop at 6:30 p.m. I just want the work to be in my life and my life to be in my work. It’s what I like,” he told me when we met for coffee last week at one of his favorite cafes in (yes) TriBeCa.

Noah Davis: I thought it was interesting that you had never been to the Tribeca Film Festival because of Cannes.

Frédéric Boyer: You can’t. There is so much preparation for Cannes. I was invited and I know Tribeca from the beginning. I know David [Earls, director of development] and Peter [Downing, operations director] very well. The filmmakers and producers say that this is the best audience in the world. For me, it’s great. I came from the Director’s Fortnight, which is a sidebar dedicated to art house film and the filmmakers. Here, it is the same. But it is larger and there is a total devotion to the filmmakers, which I love.

Is Tribeca more for the people than some other film festivals?

Yes. I think the Tribeca Film Festival is a popular film festival, in a good way. From the opening to the small documentary made in Romania, it’s for every audience and every community. The idea is not to choose a film for a community. The idea is to choose a film and the community will come. It’s not a good thing to program for the community, the place, or the market. If you have a good review or if the film can be sold, great. If the community is coming, fantastic, but the best is to choose quality films.

What do you do on a day-to-day basis? Are you watching films all the time?

My job is watching but not only. People ask me how many films I watch a year. I watch a lot, but the number is not an extremely interesting question. [Editor’s note: He watches around 1,000 films a year.] I judge a film. To judge a film is to know what is a good film, not to choose the film you love. I love melodrama. I can choose 10 melodrama, but you need to fit films into the program. Geoff [Gilmore, chief creative officer] and I love the films we are programming, but the quality is the most important. Programming is like editing. It’s like building a menu. You have a starter, an entree, dessert. You have everything in a festival.

My job is not only watching film. The most interesting part will be in June, July, and August when I meet the filmmakers, read scripts, and talk to the technicians, the producers, and the directors of photography. [I want to] follow the project and know that if a film is finishing shooting in September, it could be ready for us. The idea is to say “We can premiere your film in Tribeca,” if we like it.
The first week of June, I will be in Tel Aviv on the jury of the biggest student film festival in the world. I didn’t know the festival but it’s fantastic to meet the people from the film school. I will go because I’m working for Tribeca, but also for me. I just want to meet them. I want to say, “I’m here. I’m looking at your film. I’m respecting what you’re doing.”

Meeting the filmmakers is the most interesting part to me. Especially the filmmakers who are premiering here for the first time. The mother, the father, the brother, everybody will be here. It is something so beautiful. It is extremely important to support them.

It seems like you love film….

….Yes!

Which is kind of a stupid statement to make, but your bio is full of film-related jobs that aren’t necessarily festival-related. Did you plan to be an artistic director?

Never. It was a surprise. During the time I was working at Videosphere, I was in Turkey at a wedding and my friend called me. He asked if I wanted to be the head programmer for the Fortnight. It was a surprise. When Olivier left for Thévenin;, I thought why not try to be artistic director? I had a few interviews and I had 90 percent of the votes. It was a surprise. I think they wanted someone who wasn’t a critic.

Do you think that gives you a different perspective?

I think so. I was always totally independent. I never worked in any television channel or anything. I’m just a cinephile. A long time someone asked Jean-Luc Godard if he had any children. He said he could not have children because he was doing films. It was the same for me at the beginning. It was impossible to have children or any love affair because my priority was to watch films. It was a wonderful period because it was a crazy period. I was watching five, six, seven films each day and reading books about cinema. Fortunately, I escaped from this beautiful prison because of music, women, wine, food, life. You cannot be a perfect cinephile if you are not connected with life and politics. I love politics. I’m following the Obama campaign and the Sarkozy campaign. You can have a point of view about artistic things, about cinema, but it’s not enough. You should be in life. But also love movies.

How do you like New York?

I love it. For a cinephile, it’s fantastic because every street reminds you of something. That is totally different. When filmmakers shoot Paris, it’s not working. They have to sell the film so, for example, they have to shoot the Eiffel Tower and the Seine, which is beautiful, but all the Parisians are not living in these famous places. And you are not living in Central Park.

It must be nice that Tribeca is about to start.

We are excited. We spent a week or 10 days before the storm watching the films again to decide what we’re going to introduce and everything, but my work is done now.

Now you just hang out at coffee shops?

[Laughs] Exactly. But you know, Cannes was fantastic, but it was only 20 films. My work was to say no all the time. It was frustrating. Here is much more open.

What do you want to do next in the film world?

Producing film is something that is extremely interesting to me because it’s extremely artistic. When I’m following the project, I mostly follow the producers. There are more and more producers, especially women. Female producer are young, different, thinking more about the storyline and storytelling. And it’s great.

Noah Davis is frequently lost. He tweets here.