52e Film Fest Gent 2025

A programme with a call for tenderness, connection and resistance

The tone was set with Julian, the impressive debut by Cato Kusters, about two women who decide to get married in every country where it’s legal. The result is “an ode to love as an act of resistance in a time when LGBTQIA+ rights are under pressure worldwide,” said Program Director Wim De Witte at the festival’s opening. At just 26, Kusters became the youngest director ever to open the festival, and as if that weren’t enough, she also received the Jo Röpcke Award. “We tried to put a face to an issue that otherwise remains very abstract,” she said of her debut film. “It starts from love; the activism that follows from that is self-evident.” That final line resonated throughout the festival.

The closing film, Urchin by Harris Dickinson, was equally in tune with this socially engaged attitude. In his social-realist debut, Dickinson turns his camera on the life of a young homeless man in central London, holding British society to account.

The call for humanity also resonated strongly in the competitions and among the award winners of the 52nd edition. It was especially evident in the Grand Prix winner The Voice of Hind Rajab by Kaouther Ben Hania, a film that reconstructs the final moments of six-year-old Palestinian Hind Rajab. Its unflinching confrontation with systemic and international failure to stand up in the face of violence makes The Voice of Hind Rajab a moral appeal to keep looking and to turn empathy into action. Other award winners, too, were driven by social engagement. Barrio Triste by Stillz, winner of the Georges Delerue Award, immerses viewers in the raw street life of Medellín. In the short film competition, O Rio de Janeiro continua lindo by Felipe Casanova, was recognised for its epistolary indictment of racial power structures rooted in a colonial past. Each of these filmmakers uses cinema in their own way to create tender spaces of connection and resistance.

The search for tenderness and social engagement was also reflected in the films, many of which drew sold-out audiences, including Roofman; I Am Martin Parr; The Blue Trail; The Voice of Hind Rajab; Die, My Love; Anything That Moves; Urchin; Competition for Belgian Student Shorts 2025; Bugonia; Christy; A Useful Ghost; After the Hunt; Julian; Left-Handed Girl and The Last Spy. This 52nd edition of Film Fest Gent featured 120 feature films, 36 short films, two TV series and two VR projects. The fact that the audience felt actively engaged was reflected in once again surpassing 100,000 visits.

WSA Film Music Days 2025

In the festival’s second week, music took center stage during the WSA Film Music Days. The 25th edition of the World Soundtrack Awards became a joyful yet deeply moving celebration of the power of film music, featuring internationally acclaimed guests such as Debbie Wiseman, A. R. Rahman, Martin Phipps and Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch. Both the WSA Ceremony & Concert and the additional concert Minimalism in Motion: Glass, Nyman and Beyond sold out in no time. VIDEODROOM, the annual dream date between Film Fest Gent and VIERNULVIER where cult films receive new soundtracks, also enjoyed a particularly successful edition with roughly twice as many visitors as last year. Together, they formed the beating heart of a festival that breathes film and music as one, and whose audience once again wholeheartedly embraced its musical soul.