International Panel
The International Panel 2026 will take place on the 17th of October, from 18:45 to 20:00.
Ethical Editing in the Age of AI
This year, both the International Panel and the International Film Editors Forum (IFEF) will focus on the same topic but approach it in different ways.
In 2023, Edimotion held its first panel addressing rapid advances in machine learning and their anticipated impact on the film editing profession. The title was somewhat tongue-in-cheek: AI in Its Toddler Phase: Stay Calm, Secure the Sockets, and Keep a Watchful Eye! Since then, the AI technological revolution has continued to move at hypersonic speed, and it has become harder to keep one's humor amidst many troubling developments.
Most of the time, discussions about AI broadly fluctuate between expectations of Boom, Gloom, or Doom. In the film industry they also often dive deep into the potency (or not) of countless new tools and changing work scenarios, while ethical considerations tend to fall through the cracks. Edimotion has chosen to focus squarely on AI & Ethics this year, because we feel there is a collective danger of losing one's bearings amid the speed and ease-of-use of both standard machine learning tools and more advanced generative AI applications.
Our panel guests bring three different perspectives to this topic. Angelika Lepper is a film editor who also has a long academic career in artistic research. She is currently leading a survey on AI use amongst German film editors. Özcan Vardar is the chairman of the umbrella association TEMPO and member of its AI task force. His 2025 master thesis dealt with the „Impact of AI on Film Editing“. And Magda Woods is a data scientist, tech-entrepreneur, and founder of two AI start-ups. Her decade-long work as an AI strategist for media and publishing businesses adds a valuable viewpoint from outside the film bubble to the discussion.
Panel guests:
Angelika Lepper, Germany
Özcan Vardar, Turkey
Magda Woods, Poland
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Saturday, 17 October 2026 | Filmforum at the Museum Ludwig
18:45 – 20:00
Moderator: Dietmar Kraus
The panel is presented in collaboration with the umbrella organization TEMPO and will be held in English.
Tickets (6 € for all visitors)
© Thierry CohenAngelika Lepper
Germany
Angelika Lepper is an artistic researcher and film editor, currently an associate researcher in Hito Steyerl’s „Emergent Digital Media“ class at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. Previously, she taught in the editing program at the Film University Babelsberg from 2004 to 2014 and held a guest professorship in „Experimental Television“ at the Bauhaus-University Weimar from 2006 to 2007.
Lepper understands montage as both a method and an epistemology and investigates what happens to this mode of thought when machinic systems begin to take over editing decisions. Recent conference contributions include AI and Labour (AdBK Munich, 2024) and CUT/GENERATE: Montage and AI at Université Sorbonne Nouvelle. She is currently leading a survey on the ethics and practice of AI use in editing among members of the German Film Editors Association BFS.
Angelika Lepper was born and raised in Munich. From 1998 to 2003, she studied media art and philosophy at the State University of Art and Design in Karlsruhe. She went on to pursue a postgraduate degree in „Aesthetic Theory“ at the Hamburg University of Fine Arts (HfbK) from 2010 to 2016. She is a member of the BFS and a founding member of the network „female:pressure“, which advocates for greater visibility of women and minorities in the electronic arts and music.
© Mel McVeighMagda Woods
Poland
Magda Woods is a consultant, entrepreneur, and AI strategist with over a decade of experience at the intersection of data, AI, and publishing.
Born in Poland, Woods studied Systems Engineering in Warsaw and Computer Science at the Dublin Institute of Technology. She later completed an MBA from Bayes Business School in London, adding a commercial and strategic lens to her technical grounding.
Woods co-founded two AI startups: „Flare Data“, a „talk-to-data“ platform for publishers, and „Waive“, an NLP-driven platform for trend detection. Her current company is called „And The Robots“, through which she advises media and publishing businesses on how to build commercial value from AI. Her client projects include the first generative AI initiative for citizen services at GOV.UK, and supporting organizations such as the BBC and The Economist.
Magda Woods remains closely connected to the research community; for example, she leads the „Founders and Researchers Workshop“ at the UCL School of Management in London. She is also a member of the Royal Statistical Society and in 2018 was named one of the „Top 20 Women in Data“ by Women in Defense UK.
© Alpkan BağlıÖzcan Vardar
Turkey
Özcan Vardar is a film editor, and since 2024 chairman of the umbrella organization „TEMPO – Federation of Film Editors Associations”.
Born 1979 in Istanbul, Vardar studied computer programming at the „Macka Anatolian Technical Highschool” from 1992–96, and Mathematics and Film at the Bogazici University from 1998–2006. He has been editing fiction films and documentaries since 2007. He was selected to „Berlinale Talent Campus” and „Locarno Summer Academy” in 2011. For his work on the cinema feature film Burning Days (Kurak Günler), he and co-editor Eytan İpeker received numerous awards, including the 2022 European Film Award for Best Editing. His latest feature film, Kurtuluş, premiered in the Berlinale competition 2026 and won the Silver Bear – Grand Jury Prize.
Özcan Vardar has taught Film Grammar and Film Editing courses at various universities and led many workshops. He is a founding member of the „Film Editors’ Society of Turkey” (KUDA) and a board member of Mithat Alam Education Foundation, which was established to provide scholarships to film students. Since 2019, he is based in Hamburg.