Thierry Frémaux spent his first Cannes Film Festival in 1979 camping in the back of a beaten-up old van. The 18-year-old student from Lyons used to scrounge tickets outside the Festival Palais cinema. Now he is the delegate general of the entire shebang. He has a top-floor suite in the five-star Carlton Hotel for the duration and is responsible for putting together the world’s most famous film competition.

The 20 contenders in official competition for the 2009 Palme d’Or are a who’s who of Cannes favourites. The line-up includes Ang Lee’s rock’n’roll mockumentary Taking Woodstock, Quentin Tarantino’s B movie Inglourious Basterds, Ken Loach’s comic account of a miserable Manchester United fan, Looking for Eric, and Lars von Trier’s horror movie Antichrist.

The mainstream tenor of the competition has come as a surprise. This was meant to be the sackcloth-and-ashes Cannes, austerity in the face of the global credit crunch. Despite the conspicuous absence of a signature Hollywood blockbuster to christen the opening weekend, it looks remarkably like business as usual on the Croisette. “Cannes is not immune to the financial crisis,” says the genial, 48-year-old Frémaux. “Yes, the world is not in great shape. But the crunch has not impacted on the festival itself. The market is packed, primed and ready to go. And most of all, people want Cannes to be Cannes.” In other words, people want Cannes to be the glamorous, crazy, frivolous, silly circus that it always is.

But we also need Cannes to tell us what kind of health the film industry is in, and this is why Frémaux’s selection is causing such a stir. For me, he has assembled one of the most exciting lists of competition films of recent years. His selection is a frightening mix of young talent and pickled auteurs. But the Americans — notably the Los Angeles Times — have accused the artistic director of relying far too heavily on the usual suspects. They point out that four of the directors in competition this year have already won the Palme d’Or. They are peeved that Tarantino is the only American on the starting blocks.

The criticism drives Frémaux to spluttering distraction. The idea that his selection is parochial, or worse, unadventurous, is given short shrift. “I don’t want to sound arrogant,” he fumes, “but it is no coincidence why great directors get their films ready for Cannes. Quentin Tarantino told me that if his film wasn’t ready in time for this year’s edition he would be totally inconsolable.”

One can only wonder how Francis Ford Coppola must feel because his latest film, Tetro, didn’t even make the cut.

Frémaux likens the experience of running Cannes to managing a top football club. In some ways he is the Alex Ferguson of the festival circuit. He is in charge of the richest and most famous film club in the world. And, like Ferguson, he is a keen fan of Ken Loach. Indeed Ferguson trampled up the terraces of Old Trafford at half time during a recent Champions League qualifier, prompted by Eric Cantona, to tell Loach how much he loved The Wind That Shakes the Barley. For anyone watching, that was an extraordinary gesture by a manager who is routinely criticised for being blinkered by his priorities.

Frémaux says he is subject to the same kind of pressures. “Like the top football teams in England and France, Cannes attracts the best players,” he says. “You don’t drop the best directors in the world because they’ve already won the Palme d’Or. You are thrilled that they want to take part in your festival. More and more, Cannes is the place to be.” Why? “Because the place to be is the place to be,” he says with a Gallic shrug. “When [the festival president] Gilles Jacob hired me to be artistic director, he said: ‘you must never think that Cannes is the best festival in the world . . . but you must do what you can to maintain the idea’.”

But you can pay dearly for bad choices.

“I’ve had incredible luck this year,” Frémaux says. “Other times the selection process can be a nightmare. When you have a bad year it is difficult to come back. When you’ve had a good year it is equally difficult to come back. The most important thing is to make people feel at home.

“For movie people Cannes is a common house, a commune. We simply hold the keys. We have the responsibility to keep it in superb condition. People ask me if this edition has an agenda. My first responsibility is to assemble great films. When you’ve finished watching then we can analyse agendas. The only message is to show that cinema is alive, and adapting to the internet age.”

What’s indisputable is that the 62nd edition of the festival has the ingredients of a classic. And it’s an exceptionally good year for the Brits, who have two films competing for the Palme d’Or: Andrea Arnold's thriller Fish Tank and Loach’s Looking for Eric. Last year we couldn’t muster a single entry. “You can tell if the film industry in a country is in good shape if they have a mix of generations in competition,” Frémaux says. “Arnold and Loach — that’s a great mix of experience.”

If there is a flaw about the way Frémaux assembles the most important arthouse festival in the world, it’s that he still regards cinema as a great big childish pleasure. He is not a glutton for art-house punishment even if festival menus are governed by serious-minded films that hover, sometimes unintelligibly, over serious-minded issues.

Frémaux is childishly excited by the undetermined influences the internet will have upon the future. He is also childishly excited that the 62nd edition of his festival is opened by a Pixar animation called Up about a man with a wonderful dream and many balloons. This is the first time that the official competition has taken its first bow on such a poppy note. When pressed, he admits that he has done it for his young children.

If he were to be entirely honest, he has done it for the future.

The Cannes Film Festival opened last night and runs until May 24

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