Talking shop with Richard Peña, the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s program director, it becomes apparent that these are hardly business-as-usual days for any film festival, much less for the New York Film Festival — the city’s definitive annual movie event that is set to begin its 45th program next Friday. As the years have passed and the number of film festivals and independently produced films have skyrocketed, Mr. Peña said, he has noticed a decline both in the number of films seeking to question or challenge the modern conventions of cinema, and of art-house screens across the country still eager to screen such work.

As such, it is events like the NYFF, and people like Mr. Peña — who this year celebrates his 20th anniversary as the festival’s program director — who are fighting to prevent a communal, enlightening experience from becoming formulaic and homogeneous.

“I fear that cinema is increasingly becoming this museum art,” Mr. Peña said. “People will certainly continue to see moving images, but on their computer screens or at home on their large screens, hanging on their walls. In the 1960s, the New York Film Festival was founded in a key moment of cinematic modernism, when filmmakers were already challenging established models. A larger part of what went on at the festival was that it was a place every year not to just see movies but to think about where the movies were heading. Unfortunately, I don’t think that dialogue exists anymore — even in the critical establishment.”

That waning dialogue makes an event like the NYFF all the more integral to the artistic debate playing in New York, which remains the center of the American independent film community. When scouring this year’s mix of titles and styles, cultures and eras, cineastes will no doubt look to Mr. Peña’s wildly diverse festival as one beautifully out-of-step with the times.

Mainstream audiences will be drawn to the new films by Wes Anderson and the Coen brothers, but the foundation propping them up remains the silent films, international retrospectives, director’s dialogues, and the avant garde selections that bear all the marks of a thoughtful and discerning festival.

For two decades, striking this eclectic balance has been the mission for Mr. Peña, who was recruited away from the Art Institute of Chicago in 1987. Today, he fondly recalls the days when a casual reference made by any New Yorker to “the festival” was naturally a reference to the NYFF, not to one of the 60 or so additional film festivals that clutter the city’s events calendars today.

It didn’t take long for Mr. Peña to recognize the authority within the national film community that came with his position, charged as he was with “cutting through the noise” and identifying the next great works of both American and world cinema. It did, however, take him about three years to discover the downside to being the person in that spotlight, when he announced an opening night selection that ran counter to the critical consensus of the day.

“My third opening, in 1990, we chose ‘Miller’s Crossing,’ and for whatever reason, the New York Times hated it and Vincent Canby wrote a devastating review, and it was just terrible because people walked out of the opening night screening,” he recalled in vivid detail. “I mention this because today, ‘Miller’s Crossing’ is considered a great film and one of the Coen brother’s best. It’s fascinating to see how a film at that time could have such a bad reception, but in time could be recognized as a success — it’s an important lesson.”

Tellingly, such backlashes have been rare occurrences during Mr. Peña’s run at the NYFF, momentary departures from the considerable support he has enjoyed from a Lincoln Center audience eager to expand its horizons — both commercially and otherwise.

Mr. Peña spotlighted Pedro Almodóvar as his opening night filmmaker in 1988, and in later years, he presided over the trumpeting of the new Argentine cinema, the new Korean cinema, and even the energy of a new Iranian cinema. Since featuring Zhang Yimou’s “Red Sorghum” in his very first festival, Mr. Peña has watched China’s modern cinema flourish to the point that it is no longer worthy of special attention.

“New Chinese triumphs almost aren’t worth mentioning,” he said, “because people now simply expect Chinese films to be great.”

This year’s lineup is again steeped in a blend of popular favorites, special interests, and esoteric gems — from the international titles that have taken home awards at international competitions, such as Cristian Mingiu’s Cannes winner “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days,” to the strong American offerings from such popular filmmakers as Mr. Anderson, Noah Baumbach, Gus Van Sant, Todd Haynes, and Sidney Lumet.

If the festival is still considered by many to be a more specialized, showcase, Mr. Peña doesn’t seem to mind. A bill of 29 feature films seems like small potatoes in today’s world of supermarket-style film festivals. Through its history, he said, the NYFF has run counter to the “encyclopedic or panoramic” festival mind-set that today form the guiding principals of the Tribeca Film Festival, the Toronto Film Festival, and other events that host upward of 200 or 300 titles.

“Independent films strived at one point to be an alternative to mainstream movies,” he said. “Now they seem to be auditions created by people who want to break into mainstream filmmaking.”

Although the challenge has become more daunting than ever, with the number of yearly submissions more than doubling during Mr. Peña’s reign and the independent film world now lacking much of the edge it once celebrated, the NYFF is essentially the same as it’s always been.

What has changed, he said, is the film world at large. Watching the dialogue evolve across the decades, from a questioning of cinema’s purpose and constraints to a conversation about international movements and the democratization of the industry brought about by cheaper technology and online distribution, Mr. Peña noted the way in which the lofty tones of the 1960s groundbreakers has dissipated from the critical space.

“This is a very precarious time for movies, and people have no idea where we are going,” Mr. Peña said. “The movie-going experience might be changing fundamentally, if indeed movie theaters start closing down, and filmmakers continue down this road, where the kinds of issues and questions that concerned people in the ’60s are no longer being seen as interesting. Today instead, all the talk is about making it by any means necessary — ‘How can I get my film to be distributed by so and so?’ You read the reports from a festival like Sundance, and it’s all about the business, not about the work.”