Flanders International Film Festival

With its focus on both film and music, the Flanders International Film Festival - Ghent occupies its own unique place in the international festival landscape. For over two decades now, we have been holding our competition on "the impact of music on film", and every year sees increasing popularity of the film music concerts and great anticipation as to the winner of the World Soundtrack Awards (WSA). Our pioneering role has not gone unrewarded. Not only has Ghent become a meeting place for established and up-and-coming film music talent, but increasing numbers of other festivals are also featuring music. Think of Berlin, Cannes and Karlovy Vary to name but three. Even the European Film Academy has been awarding a prize for the best European film music composer since 2004.

This is not only the result of charisma, but also increasing globalisation. For film festivals are just as subject to this trend as anything else. Over and over, the largest festivals succeed in bringing together people from the widest variety of locations and cultures. All of them are creatively occupied with image and culture, without, of course, forgetting the economic undercurrent. Film as art form and film as industry: it is an ever-recurring tug of war. But at film festivals, these two aspects blend into a single harmonious whole. Sometimes the one aspect serves as the foundation for the other, since that which gets financed in the one cinema market may get a place in the competition in the other.

Usually, a lot of flag-waving and no little glamour are on display. With the result that at every film festival there arises a conflict between entertainment and research, between seeking out a balance and seeking out the new, between the established values and the ambitious newcomers. And the Flanders International Film Festival - Ghent is no exception to this.

Indeed, we actively incorporate and encompass the latest international trends, translating them into our own wide social framework. In this way, sponsors, students, critics, film fans and senior citizens can all enjoy the previews and premiers, browse through the World Cinema and fall for the charms of the A Look Apart section. In this way, we fulfil our mostra function. We show a high quality selection of what is on offer in world cinema.

But we don't stop there. By systematically increasing the prize fund and by paying out the awards to the distributors, we help films reach theatres. In this way we contribute to the diversification of the film offer and we try to give solid backing to high quality film.

In all of this, we never lose sight of the local film industry and Flemish and Belgian films are given a preferential place in the programme. For us it is an opportunity to involve the film profession actively in the film event, because we pack dynamism into the Flanders International Film Festival - Ghent. Governments come to it to make much talked-about policy declarations, young people, senior citizens and other social groups find their own niche there, and speakers of other languages find films in their own mother tongues. In short, we turn it into a film festival with tangible dimensions. It follows that our mission is to organise as good as possible a film festival every year. This is our goal, what our young and alert team enthusiastically strives towards, day after day.