About the festival

The International Love Film Festival of Mons, which was created under Elio Di Rupo's initiative in 1984, is aimed at uniting so-called intellectual cinema with more popular cinema.

A Love Story with Mons

The first six Festivals took place at the "Le Clichy" cinema, which no longer exists today. The main features of the Festival were established from the start: reception of actors, prestigious directors, retrospectives of classics, overview of Belgian cinema, music performances,etc.

In 27 Festivals, we have screened over a thousand films that were not released in Belgium and received several hundreds of cinema personalitites such as Bernadette Lafont, Claude Lelouch, Andrzej Zulawski, Nathalie Baye, Audrey Tautou, Marion Cotillard, Laetitia Casta, Jeanne Moreau, Charlotte Rampling, John Madden, Lauren Bacall, Valéria Golino, Josiane Balasko, Gérard Darmon, Gérard Jugnot, Patrick Bruel, and many others from all over the world.

Today the FIFA can be said to be not only the oldest, uninterrupted French-speaking festival (not one year has been missed), but also one of the most innovative, attractive and best-known festivals worldwide.

Love in all its Forms

The Festival, which is traditionally set in February during the week of Saint Valentine's Day, deals with the theme of "Love" in all its forms. The selection of the films, which is far from obsolete and overused romantic clichés, is aimed at looking out onto the world and on film directors whose works are unfortunately not often commercially distributed, includes, among others, the screening of Nagisa Oshima's In the Realm of the Senses, which was banned in Belgium.

For a quarter of a century, the FIFA has been building up a unique cultural identity as it has been highlighting rare and thought-provoking works that challenge the status-quo. Apart from giving opportunities to new generations of actors and directors, the Festival has also become an exceptional event for experienced artists, a convivial meeting place for the public and a privileged crossroad for the many cinema professionals from around the whole world.

The tributes, the "crushes" on notable cinema personalities, the exhibitions, the educational workshops and the multicultural galas, which concentrate on the theme of Love in in all its forms on the big screen, give the Festival a unique personality.