LONDON—IBC announced today that its most prestigious honour, the International Honour for Excellence (IHFE), will be presented to world-renowned editor Thelma Schoonmaker. The award recognizes her extraordinary achievements and lifetime contribution to the art and craft of filmmaking, spanning more than five decades and helping shape modern cinema through her close collaboration with Martin Scorsese.

The award will be presented in person on Sunday, Sept. 14 at 18.00 CEST on the main stage of the IBC Conference in the RAI Amsterdam. Earlier in the day at the IBC Conference, Schoonmaker will also participate in a Fireside Chat about her life in film, hosted by journalist and author Carolyn Giardina, Consulting Editor of American Cinema Editors’ ‘Cinema Editor’ Magazine. The session will be free to attend for all IBC2025 attendees.

Schoonmaker has been at the forefront of moving picture innovation for over 50 years, having helped Scorsese edit his first feature in 1967 and gone on to collaborate with him in the editing of his creative vision in every major work since Raging Bull. Her credits include Goodfellas, The Wolf of Wall Street, The Irishman, and most recently, Killers of the Flower Moon.

She is the only editor to receive nine Oscar nominations, winning a record three Academy Awards for Raging Bull, The Aviator and The Departed. Schoonmaker has also won BAFTAs for Raging Bull and Goodfellas, and in 2019 received the BAFTA Fellowship—the British Academy’s highest honor.

A passionate advocate for film restoration, she continues to champion the legacy of her late husband, director Michael Powell, and the landmark works of Powell and Pressburger. The influence of the editing in Scorsese’s films extends across generations of filmmakers, documentary makers and editors, inspiring technical mastery, creativity and unwavering passion for the craft of storytelling.

Michael Crimp, IBC’s Chief Executive Officer, commented: "Thelma Schoonmaker’s unique contribution and legacy is felt across the entire media world. Her dedication to storytelling, technical brilliance and lifelong commitment to collaboration exemplify the very best of our industry. People are at the heart of IBC, and we’re proud to honour those who have not only shaped the media we all know and love—but who continue to inspire new generations to come."

Globo Recognised with Special Award for 100 Years of Innovation
IBC is also recognizing Globo, Latin America’s largest media company, with a Special Award for its continued leadership, innovation and support for global media advancement. Alongside consistent commitment to industry collaboration, cultural storytelling and audience connection, Globo is leading new initiatives to accelerate Brazil’s next broadcasting evolution with the rollout of TV 3.0.

Globo is, above all, a great storyteller of Brazilian stories, reaching 70 million Brazilians daily and 160 million monthly across all its platforms—open TV, pay TV, streaming, and digital. In 2025, the group celebrates a century of media leadership in Latin America, since the launch of its newspaper O Globo in 1925.

As it looks to the future, Globo reaffirms its commitment to innovation, Brazilian talent, and continuous reinvention. The company is at the forefront of the media industry, leading the implementation of TV 3.0 (DTV+) and strategically and ethically integrating AI across its operations, from content creation to personalised audience experiences, all while upholding strong governance and valuing human talent.

Swiss Team Awarded Best Technical Paper for Research on AI for Trusted News
Alexis Allemann, Sebastien Noir and Andrei Popescu-Belis are being awarded the coveted Best Technical Paper at IBC2025 for their work developing an AI Chatbot for Trusted News, underpinned with strict editorial standards and transparency. The paper is entitled EBU NEO – A sophisticated multilingual chatbot for a trusted news ecosystem exploration.

The authors—from the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) and la Haute École d'Ingénierie et de Gestion du Canton de Vaud (HEIG-VD)—sought to address the quality, bias and transparency concerns of commercial news chatbots. Their approach was to optimize Retrieval Augmented Generation (a technique used to enhance Large Language Models). The result is a database of over 3.5 million articles growing by 3000 news stories per day, and an invaluable tool for both professional journalists and the public to explore the news.

Paul Entwistle, Chair of the IBC Technical Papers Committee and Peer Review Panel, said: "The paper was very well written, providing an excellent technical disclosure, innovative improvements, detailed performance comparisons and a case study with important lessons on deploying a public-facing AI. The topic itself, trusted news in the age of AI, is critically important, with the EBU uniquely positioned to develop such a system. The paper highlights the scale and complexity of the task, the impressive capabilities that AI can bring, as well as reminding us of its current limitations. This is excellent work—and significant beyond our own industry."

The paper—alongside 22 other successful Technical Papers—was selected by IBC’s international peer review panel of 20 media technology experts from 337 submissions covering original research on solutions to real-world problems faced by the international broadcast and digital media industry.

The Best Technical Paper will be formally presented at the IBC2025 Conference on Saturday Sept. 13 at 13:30 CEST and celebrated at the IBC Innovation Awards presentation on Sunday Sept. 14, alongside Thelma Schoonmaker, Globo, and all other award winners, at an invitation only event.

Thelma Schoonmaker’s free-to-attend session will take place on Sunday, Sept. 14 at 16:15 CEST on stage 1 of the IBC Conference. For more information on the IBC Conference, please visit: https://show.ibc.org/conference-experience

Learn more about the IBC Innovation Awards and finalists at: https://show.ibc.org/ibc-awards

AMSTERDAM—The man behind Gollum from the “Lord of the Rings” movies will have a new “precious” on his mantle, as IBC 2019 has announced that it will bestow is International Honor for Excellence on actor, director and producer Andy Serkis.

The England-born performer is best known for his performance-capture roles of Gollum, Supreme Leader Snoke in “Star Wars” and as Caesar in the “Planet of the Apes” trilogy. It is his work in improving the method of motion capture for CGI toward the combination of technology and an actor’s performance—“bringing together the highest performance standards with the latest in image recognition and CGI technology,” as IBC describes it—that he will be recognized for.

“The International Honor for Excellence has a long history of rewarding those who have transformed our creative vision,” said Michael Crimp, CEO of IBC. “Andy Serkis has achieved this by bringing extraordinary humanity to computer-generated characters.”

“I feel incredibly honored to have been chosen as the recipient of this year’s prestigious IBC Award,” said Serkis. “In turn, I must share this appreciation with the phenomenal legions of creative artists, visionaries and pioneers with whom I’ve been lucky enough to dance with on this next generation of storytelling.”

In addition to his performances, Serkis has his own production company, Imaginarium Studios, as has directed films including “Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle” and “Breathe.”

Serkis will receive his award during the IBC 2019 Awards Ceremony on Sunday, Sept. 15. Earlier in the day, he will also by part of an IBC 2019 Conference Convention Keynote that will review his career, the state of motion capture and the future of technology for the film and TV industries.

IBC 2019 will take place from Sept. 13-17 in Amsterdam.

LONDON—There is some symmetry between IBC and the recipient for its International Honor for Excellence award. As the annual convention celebrates its 50th anniversary it is recognizing 50 years of sound innovation from Dolby Laboratories.

In 1967, when IBC first began, Ray Dolby developed the Dolby A-Type Audio Noise Reduction system, which would become a de facto standard. Dolby would also introduce the Dolby B consumer cassette format.

Dolby’s influence would spread to movies, providing improvements to cinema audio with films like “A Clockwork Orange,” “Star Wars” and “Batman Returns,” as well as many others. It would offer further advancements with Dolby Digital for TV and DVDs, and in 2012 introduced Dolby Atmos, object-based audio that can place individual sounds anywhere in a three-dimensional space.

“Dolby’s great achievements in changing the soundtrack of all our lives, over 50 years, cannot be underestimated, and I am delighted that Dolby is the recipient of the IBC 2017 International Honor for Excellence,” said Michael Crimp, CEO of IBC.

IBC had previously honored Ray Dolby in 2000 with the John Tucker Award, which was the predecessor of the International Honor for Excellence.

Craig Todd, senior vice president and CTO of Dolby Labs, will receive the award during the IBC 2017 Awards Ceremony on Sept. 17 at 6:30 p.m. in the RAI Auditorium, which is appropriately equipped with Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos technology.