Now nearing its 26th edition, the World Soundtrack Awards in Ghent have made the Belgian city film scoring’s home base. That story began in the 1980s, when Film Fest Ghent adopted screen music as its calling card, a focus that led to the World Soundtrack Academy and Awards at the turn of the millennium. The World Soundtrack Awards has since become a key showcase and industry hub, running largely in parallel with its parent festival.

“We’re expecting much more integration and interaction between visiting filmmakers and composers,” says Film Fest Ghent program director Wim De Witte, who oversees the WSA’s Film Music Days. In past editions, those talks, roundtables, performances and awards ceremonies usually began as the main festival wound down. This year, the WSA runs alongside it, bringing filmmakers and composers together in concert. “It used to be an aisle within the festival that attracted only film music people,” De Witte continues. “We want to open it up.”

Collaboration is the motif of this year’s edition, which runs Oct. 8-10, a day after the festival opens with “Coward,” from native son Lukas Dhont. It’s fine kismet that the Belgian Oscar submission, which Dhont calls “a musical about the repression of emotions,” brings its key music team to Ghent, even as the wider shift stems just as much from WSA member requests.

In a related development, “Composers have told us how difficult it can be to communicate with filmmakers because they speak different languages, while directors have told us how hard it can be to explain what they want from the music,” De Witte says. “So this year, we’ve organized two talks around that conversation: how filmmakers approach music, how they communicate with composers, where to place it, what kind to use, and whether it should work against or heighten a scene.”

The first pairs Dhont with longtime composer Valentin Hadjadj and “Coward” music supervisor Pierre-Marie Dru; the second teams director Edward Berger with his musical soulmate, Volker Bertelmann. Both talks unite established creative duos while putting two festival fixtures front and center, with Dhont a former attendee turned jury member, and Bertelmann, a two-time WSA Film Composer of the Year. Together, they reflect the WSA’s ambition to use Film Fest Ghent as a film music incubator.

To that end, the program includes matchmaking and student networking sessions, while the industry days welcome Third Character, an annual film music market organized with Music & Cinéma Marseille that pairs composers with producer-director duos developing new projects. Those looking for results needn’t go far: Dhont and Hadjadj met as students at a 2013 Third Character session in France, forging a partnership that now carries them to Flanders.

Furthermore, “When you bring people together, it sometimes grows into a collaboration,” says De Witte, pointing to the “Coward” duo as well as to director Jacqueline Lentzou and rocker-composer Colin Stetson, who met on Ghent’s 2023 jury and went on to make Venice Horizons prize-winner “A Day in the Life of Jo: Chapter Phaedra.” (As it happens, Dhont sat on that jury, too. Clearly, an auspicious year.)

Looking ahead, WSA organizers believe an earlier weekend slot will boost industry attendance, which in turn could open new ways to address familiar concerns. “We try to avoid another AI talk, but whenever we ask our boards which subjects we should focus on, AI always ends up on the list,” says De Witte. “Of course, you don’t need to convince our members that composers, not machines, should make the music. You need to convince producers.”

Even as it welcomes new attendees, the WSA wants to preserve the casual camaraderie that has made Ghent a key stop for global talent. “Composers often say they live in L.A., just around the corner from each other, but never see each other there,” says De Witte. “And then they meet in Ghent. After all, we do have Belgian beer and chocolate.”