Cinephilia
![The Italian director Federico Fellini, a fashionable figure in the United States during the 1960s and 1970s, owed part of his popularity to the support of film critics and the distribution of foreign films in order to accommodate the increasingly sophisticated public.](/Images/godic/202501/04/Federico_Fellini2232.jpg")
![Wong Kar-wai (pictured) is a renowned arthouse film director from Hong Kong.](/Images/godic/202501/04/Wong_Kar-wai_at_2008_TIFF2232.jpg")
![Though his films have met with mixed commercial success, American director Michael Mann (pictured above at Cinémathèque Française in 2009) is often considered to be a major figure by contemporary cinephiles.[5][6]](/Images/godic/202501/04/Michael_Mann_-_French_Cinematheque_-_4th_July_20092232.jpg")
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Cinephilia is the term used to refer to a passionate interest in cinema, film theory and film criticism. The term is a portmanteau of the words cinema and philia, one of the four ancient Greek words for love. A person with a passionate interest in cinema is called a cinephile or cinemaphile.