CANNES, May 19 ― Each evening, Thierry Frémaux, the director of the Cannes Film Festival, greets stars on the red carpet, smartly dressed in a Brioni tuxedo. But it is his work offstage during the year that makes him one of the most powerful ― and scrutinised ― figures in the film universe: selecting the films shown here each year.

Culling through some 1,800 films to select around 50 is a job that requires great aplomb and other qualities that Frémaux seems to possess: boundless energy, ruthless efficiency, a profound love of cinema and the diplomatic skills to contend with the inevitable pressures placed by Hollywood, the complex French cultural bureaucracy and directors themselves, pushing the fruits of their labour.

Not that Frémaux, 54, wants to acknowledge those pressures, and certainly not in the thick of the festival, which runs through Sunday.

Filmmakers say they will never forget the moment when Frémaux calls to say their films have been chosen for Cannes. “It was beautiful,” said Xavier Dolan, the 25-year-old Quebecois director and actor who shared the jury prize for “Mommy” last year and is on this year’s jury, led by Joel and Ethan Coen.

Frémaux helped make Dolan’s career. When his 2012 film, “Laurence Anyways,” was chosen for Un Certain Regard, the section of the festival reserved for more challenging works, Dolan said he was upset because he had wanted it to be in competition. But he later realized Frémaux was trying to “protect” him, he said. “It was a very fatherly thing to do.”

The Berlin and Venice film festivals have lost some wattage in recent years, and Toronto is seen as increasingly North America-oriented. Cannes by contrast is “the one place that everybody wants to put their films,” said Kent Jones, director of the New York Film Festival, adding, “There’s a lot of pressure that is not experienced by any other festival.”

With power comes grumbling. Last year the festival opened with the rather flat “Grace of Monaco,” which starred Nicole Kidman and found an American home on the Lifetime channel. The latest edition of the festival opened with the French director Emmanuelle Bercot’s “Standing Tall,” about a troubled teenage boy. It was hailed for being only the second film directed by a woman to open the festival but criticised for being too grim for a glitzy opening night.

Critics have complained that there are five French films out of 19 in competition this year, which is widely seen as a result of domestic pressure in France, where the festival is a cornerstone of the cultural landscape. (Prime Minister Manuel Valls and Culture Minister Fleur Pellerin have visited the festival this year.) Frémaux has also been criticized this year for not choosing “My Golden Days,” a critically acclaimed film by Arnaud Desplechin, for the main competition. It is instead showing in the parallel programme Directors’ Fortnight.

During the year, Frémaux, an avid Twitter user and lifelong fan of his hometown football team, Olympique Lyonnais, travels the world looking at new films. He has said that he prefers a good commercial film to a bad art-house one. But he is equally at home with more recherché films as well.

Straightforward and down to earth in a country obsessed with hierarchy, Frémaux was a judo champion while growing up in a middle-class family in Lyon, where he still lives half the week and has a second full-time job directing the Institut Lumière. After joining the Cannes film selection team in 1999, he became director of the festival in 2007, and observers note that he cannot please all of the people all of the time.

Citing Frémaux’s martial arts experience, Jean-Michel Frodon, a former editor of Cahiers du Cinema and a critic for Slate.fr, said, “He knows how to deal with adversaries - not to fight back, but to use the strength of your adversary to win.” ― The New York Times