Société des Réalisateurs de Films (SRF)
The French association of film directors, co-organizer of the Directors' Fortnight at Cannes and advocate for directors' creative rights and authorship in French and European cinema.
Overview
The Société des Réalisateurs de Films (SRF) is the French association of film directors, founded in 1968 by a group of filmmakers connected to the French New Wave who sought to create an independent, director-run organization that placed creative vision at the center of French film culture. The SRF is best known internationally as the co-organizer of the Directors' Fortnight (Quinzaine des Cinéastes) at the Cannes Film Festival, one of the most prestigious parallel sections at Cannes and historically a platform for discovering directors who later enter official competition. The SRF also advocates for directors' authorship rights, remuneration, and creative autonomy within the French and European production landscape.
The SRF's founding in 1968 was directly connected to the political and cultural upheaval of May 1968 in France. A group of directors -- including Jacques Rivette, Claude Lelouch, Roman Polanski, and others -- demanded and achieved the cancellation of the 1968 Cannes Festival in solidarity with striking workers and students. The SRF emerged from this moment as a directors' organization committed to cinema as cultural expression rather than purely commercial entertainment.
Directors' Fortnight (Quinzaine des Cinéastes)
The Directors' Fortnight, launched at Cannes in 1969, has been one of the most culturally significant parallel sections at the world's most important film festival for over five decades. The SRF programs the Fortnight independently of the official Cannes selection committee, choosing films based on the directorial team's own curatorial vision rather than the festival's institutional priorities. This independence has allowed the Fortnight to premiere films that went on to become landmarks of world cinema -- including early work by directors including Martin Scorsese, Wim Wenders, Werner Herzog, and many others who screened at the Fortnight before entering the official competition in later years.
The Fortnight's programming identity -- adventurous, director-centered, internationally diverse, willing to champion first-time filmmakers -- reflects the SRF's founding principles. A Fortnight selection provides a Cannes platform with genuine curatorial credibility for films that the official selection may not have chosen.
Authorship Advocacy
The SRF's advocacy for directors' authorship rights operates within France's strong droit d'auteur (author's right) legal tradition, which provides directors with moral rights and proportional remuneration entitlements that are more robust than the work-for-hire frameworks common in Anglophone countries. The SRF monitors and engages with legislative and regulatory developments that affect these rights, participating in the cultural policy debates that shape French and European audiovisual law.
What Filmmakers Should Know
For international filmmakers, a Directors' Fortnight selection at Cannes represents a prestigious premiere opportunity with genuine international market visibility. The Fortnight's curatorial reputation means that distributors and sales agents pay serious attention to its selections as signals of directorial quality and potential.
For French directors, SRF membership provides professional community, advocacy support on creative rights, and connection to the French film culture that the SRF has helped shape since 1968.
See Also
For the European directors federation that the SRF participates in, see FERA in this directory. For the Cannes Film Festival context in which the Directors' Fortnight operates, see the Film Awards Directory.
