From 8 to 19 October, Ghent became a meeting place for filmmakers, actors, composers, critics and passionate cinephiles. Film Fest Gent 2025 presented 119 feature films, 38 shorts, two series and two VR projects. Many of the films arrived in Ghent after premieres and awards at Cannes, Venice, Berlinale and other major international festivals. Yet Film Fest Gent remained an important destination for discovering and revisiting some of the most significant cinema of the year.

Debuts, auteurs and contemporary stories

The festival opened and closed with two bold directorial debuts: Julian by Belgian filmmaker Cato Kusters and Urchin, the first feature directed by British actor Harris Dickinson. The international competition comprised 12 films, including major festival prize-winners such as Dreams (Sex, Love) by Dag Johan Haugerud, Father Mother Sister Brother by Jim Jarmusch and The Voice of Hind Rajab by Kaouther Ben Hania. The programme also featured new work by Yorgos Lanthimos, Lynne Ramsay, Richard Linklater, Radu Jude and Hong Sang-soo. Particular attention was given to emerging filmmakers, while themes of family, literature and contemporary social issues ran through many of the selected films.

Belgian cinema in the spotlight

The Belgian Cinema Today section presented premieres by a new generation of Belgian and Belgium-based filmmakers. The programme included L’intérêt d’Adam by Laura Wandel, The Silent Treatment by Caroline Strubbe, Têtes Brûlées by Maja-Aimée Idir, Fantastique by Marjolein Prins and Mother by Teona Strugar Mitevska. Together, these films offered a revealing picture of the diversity and vitality of Belgian cinema.

25 years of the World Soundtrack Awards

Music once again played a central role in the festival, which celebrated the 25th anniversary of the World Soundtrack Awards.

Among the international guests were composers Debbie Wiseman and A. R. Rahman. The musical programme included concerts dedicated to Philip Glass and Michael Nyman, while photographer Chris De Witte was presented in a special exhibition.

The adventurous VIDEODROOM programme brought classic films back to the big screen with live soundtracks by artists including Xiu Xiu and Jozef Van Wissem.

Beyond the competition

The festival also featured a retrospective of British filmmaker Nicolas Roeg and screenings of films by American experimental filmmaker James Benning, presented in collaboration with S.M.A.K.

With its combination of international auteurs, emerging voices, Belgian premieres, experimental cinema and a distinctive focus on film music, Film Fest Gent once again confirmed its place among Belgium’s most important film festivals.

At Film Fest Gent 2025, Sergei Loznitsa’s “Two Prosecutors” was presented to a Belgian audience, with Alexander Kuznetsov, who plays the leading role, attending the festival and representing the film on the red carpet.

Sasha – forgive the familiarity – immediately looked as though he belonged among his Flemish actor peers. With his contemporary haircut, relaxed style and confident manner, he could easily have been mistaken for a young Belgian actor. He also speaks excellent English, which made his conversation with the audience particularly natural and engaging.

And he proved to be remarkably charming. Kuznetsov was open, relaxed and surprisingly frank in answering questions. At one point he admitted that he would gladly return to Russia and continue working there, but, as long as the “enemy” remains in power, there is no road home for him. After watching the film, the remark acquired an additional, almost unsettling resonance.

In “Two Prosecutors”, Kuznetsov plays Alexander Kornev, a young provincial prosecutor in the Soviet Union in 1937. He is still an idealist, genuinely convinced that the law can protect people and that injustice can be corrected by appealing to the right authorities.

Everything changes when Kornev receives a letter from a prisoner describing torture and illegal arrests. He decides to investigate and seeks help from his superiors. His journey takes him through an increasingly Kafkaesque world of offices, corridors, waiting rooms and bureaucratic procedures — eventually bringing him into contact with the highest levels of the Soviet legal system.

Kuznetsov’s transformation is one of the film’s strongest elements. It was almost difficult to believe that the fashionable, self-confident young man we had just seen on the red carpet was the same person as the awkward and naïve provincial prosecutor on screen. Kornev is not a rebel. He is a loyal Soviet official who still believes that the system can be made to work properly. And that is precisely what makes his situation so tragic.

According to Kuznetsov, the film is legally and historically about 1937, but in reality Loznitsa is speaking about contemporary Russia. The director deliberately leaves the historical parallels largely unresolved. When the audience tried to establish “who is who” among the characters and their possible contemporary counterparts, Kuznetsov did not attempt to decode them, referring the audience to Loznitsa himself.

One character, however, is difficult to overlook. Anatoly Bely, playing Prosecutor Andrei Vyshinsky, creates an almost macabre figure, eerily close to his historical prototype. His calmness and respectable appearance make him more frightening, not less.

Loznitsa does not make a conventional political film with obvious labels and direct comparisons. Instead, he examines the machinery of power: what happens when a person who genuinely believes in justice discovers that the legal system has become an instrument of repression.

The film’s atmosphere is consequently as important as its plot. The endless corridors, closed doors, official conversations and seemingly meaningless bureaucratic rituals create a world in which the individual is constantly moving but never getting anywhere. The system does not necessarily need to threaten him openly. It simply makes him wait, redirects him to another office and forces him to follow procedures that ultimately lead nowhere.

This is where the historical setting of 1937 becomes particularly disturbing. The film may belong to the past, but its central question is painfully contemporary: what happens when the state itself decides what is true, what is legal and who is guilty?

For the audience in Ghent, the presence of Alexander Kuznetsov added another layer to that question. On the red carpet stood a young European actor, speaking excellent English and looking completely at home among his Flemish contemporaries. On screen, he was a Soviet prosecutor who still believed that the law could save him.

The contrast was striking – and perhaps one of the most powerful things about the evening.

“Two Prosecutors” is therefore not simply a historical drama about Stalin’s 1937. It is a film about the fragility of law, the seductive power of bureaucracy and the moment when loyalty to a system collides with moral responsibility.

And that is why Loznitsa’s 1937 feels so uncomfortably close to today.