The concept of the festival is to help people learn about movies and stimulate them to do something with that knowledge. To that end the festival organised "The memory of the Film", the "Plus Parcours", the "Digifest" and especially for youngsters the "XPLOREZONE".

The festival stimulates people to explore movies and hence cultures they would have left unattended otherwise. Exploring is the main theme in "A LOOK APART", a subsection of the "World Cinema". This section tries to highlight tendencies that are expected to become very important in the future.

The festival has one special feature which makes it stand out on an international level: the music theme. The Flanders International Film Festival Ghent was founded in 1974.