The World Soundtrack Awards in Ghent, now in their 26th year, have become the center of Belgian urban film scoring. This story began in the 1980s, when Ghent Film Fest adopted screen music as its calling card; this focus led to the World Academy of Soundtracks and Awards at the turn of the millennium. The World Soundtrack Awards have since become a major showcase and industry hub, run largely in parallel with the main festival.
So far.
“We expect much more integration and interaction between visiting filmmakers and composers,” says Film Fest Ghent program director Wim De Witte, who oversees WSA’s Film Music Days. In past editions, these talks, roundtables, performances and award ceremonies often began when the main festival ended. This year WSA is also working with him, bringing together filmmakers and composers in concert. “This used to be a corridor of the festival that only attracted soundtrack artists,” De Witte continues. “We want to open this”
Collaboration is the motif of this year’s edition of the festival, which will be held from October 8-10, a day after opening with the song “Coward” by native son Lukas Dhont. It is good fortune that the Belgian Oscar presentation, which Dhont calls “a musical about the repression of emotions”, brought the main musical team to Ghent, even though the broader change stemmed from the demands of WSA members.
“Composers told us how difficult it can be to communicate with filmmakers because they speak different languages, and directors tell us how difficult it can be to explain what they want from the music,” says De Witte. “So this year, we organized two conversations around that: how filmmakers approach music, how they communicate with composers, where to place it, what genre to use, and whether it should work against a scene or elevate it.”
The first pair featured Dhont with longtime composer Valentin Hadjadj and “Coward” music supervisor Pierre-Marie Dru; Edward Berger, director of the second team, with his musical soulmate Volker Bertelmann. Both talks bring together established creative duos while putting two festival fixtures front and centre; Dhont, a former participant, and Bertelmann, a jury member, were twice awarded WSA Film Composer of the Year. Together, they reflect WSA’s ambition to use Film Fest Ghent as a film music incubator.
To this end, the program includes matchmaking and student networking sessions, while industry days host Third Character, the annual soundtrack market organized with Music & Cinéma Marseille, which pairs composers with producer-director duos developing new projects. Those looking for results need not look far: Dhont and Hadjadj met as students at the Third Character session in France in 2013 and have now formed a partnership that has taken them to Flanders.
“When you bring people together, sometimes it becomes collaboration,” says De Witte, pointing to the “Coward” duo as well as director Jacqueline Lentzou and rocker-composer Colin Stetson, who teamed up on the Ghent 2023 jury and produced the Venice Horizons-winning “A Day in the Life of Jo: Chapter Phaedra.” (Actually, Dhont was also on that jury. Frankly, it was an auspicious year.)
Looking ahead, WSA organizers believe an earlier weekend slot will increase industry participation, which could open up new ways to address familiar concerns. “We try to avoid another AI conversation, but when we ask our boards what issues we should focus on, AI is always on the list,” says De Witte. “Of course, you don’t need to convince our members that composers, not machines, should make music. You need to convince the producers.”
Even as it welcomes new participants, WSA wants to maintain the casual camaraderie that has made Ghent an important destination for global talent. “Composers often say they live in Los Angeles, just away from each other, but have never seen each other there,” De Witte says. “Then they meet in Ghent. After all, we have Belgian beer and chocolate.”