31e Internationaal Filmfestival van Vlaanderen-Gent 2004

The festival offers a few retrospectives this year, with ‘South Africa, ten years after Apartheid’ as its main focus. Together with art center Vooruit, guest cinema for a large number of films, all kinds of documentaries, tv series and fiction films are presented on the subject. On occasion of the retrospective, the festival collaborates with the team of Jigsaw Circus, a festival dedicated to music videos. On occasion of the festival Jigsaw Circus shows a series of video clips from South Africa. Another retrospective is dedicated to Lord Richard Attenborough, from who nine films are shown.

The ‘A look apart’ programme once again offers a variety of challenging films. For instance American independents, new works by Agnès Varda and George Lucas’ student films.

Some rough diamonds are included in the Belgian Shorts programme, short films by the then unknown Michaël Roskam (Carlo) and Jonas Geirnaert (Flatlife).

New this year is the Mine Explore Award, a prize awarded by a youth jury (aged 18 to 26), going to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind by Michel Gondry. The Grand Prix this year goes to Hirokazu Kore-eda for Nobody Knows. Head of the jury is Maurice Jarre, who received the Lifetime Achievement during the WSA last year.

Big winner at the World Soundtrack Awards this year is Gabriel Yared (Film Composer of the Year, Soundtrack Composer of the Year, Best Original Soundtrack of the Year). The Lifetime Achievements this year are awarded to Alan Bergman and Marilyn Bergman.