For its 48th edition (12 – 23 October), Film Fest Ghent will again be a vibrant and pleasant meeting place for everyone who wants to experience film and film culture. International guests will be present in abundance, including the directors Leos Carax, Ari Folman, Miguel Gomes, Radu Jude, Jacques Audiard, Panah Panahi, and actresses Ludivine Sagnier and Renate Reinsve, who won the Best Actress Award in Cannes with The Worst Person in the World.
While last year’s 47th edition had to transform itself into a hybrid, restrained festival edition characterised by solidarity with festival colleagues and cinemas, this year Film Fest Ghent goes all out for the encounter with its visitors.
The 48th edition of Film Fest Ghent presents a selection of the most challenging, original and vital films around. It promises to be a rough ride this year with our selected filmmakers focussing on difficult, often violent subject matter, raising tough questions about society and offering new perspectives in the process. Anger can be useful and productive.
There was plenty of film material to choose from. Programme director Wim De Witte and his team selected 118 feature films and 31 short films from an offer of almost 1,100 titles, subdivided into more than 900 screeners and about 150 physically or digitally presented festival films from Berlin, Cannes, Karlovy Vary, Locarno, Toronto, Telluride and others.
Wim De Witte is particularly proud that this year sees more recent films make it into the programme than ever before. The recently concluded Venice Film Festival proved to be a notably strong source with films such as, among others, Captain Volkonogov Escaped by Aleksey Chupov and Natasha Merkulova, The Last Duel by Ridley Scott, The Card Counter by Paul Schrader, Madres paralelas by Pedro Almodovar and The Lost Daughter by Maggie Gyllenhaal. Not forgetting Spencer by Pablo Larrain, the film about Diana, Princess of Wales, which premiered in Venice and is also in the running for our Grand Prix 2021.
