Noah Cowan is Executive Director of the San Francisco Film Society (SFFS) that hosts the annual San Francisco International Film Festival.

Cowan joined SFFS last year, and prior to that he spent a lot of his time at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). His last post was as artistic director of the Bell Lightbox at TIFF.

In this interview we talk to Cowan about why he moved from Toronto to San Francisco and the various facets of the 58th San Francisco International Film Festival that runs from April 26 to May 6, 2015. This is the first year where Cowan has worked on the festival from the start and we wanted to find out about his vision for the film society and the film festival.

We wanted to know how they chose Alex Gibney’s film on Steve Jobs “The Man In The Machine,” as their opening night film. Or, how they came to choose Alexander Winter’s documentary “Deep Web,” a film about Silk Road and bitcoin. Both these films are about entrepreneurship and technology, the twin subjects that are of deep interest to people in the San Francisco bay area.

Besides technology, food is another important ingredient in this year’s festival and Cowan shares some of the films screening at this year’s festival.

Finally, we talk about his favorite film and growing up in an artistic family in Canada.Curious to know what is Cowan’s favorite film (s) tune in to find out.

You can follow Noah Cowan on Twitter.

LISTEN TO NOAH COWAN TALK ABOUT 58th SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL