It is a landmark year for the World Soundtrack Awards , which are celebrating 25 years of recognizing the contributions of global film and television composers. The event spawned out of Belgium’s Film Fest Ghent , which cleverly realized it needed to set itself apart from similar film events back in the 1980s. The festival’s focus on film music eventually settled into the World Soundtrack Awards and its parent organization, the World Soundtrack Academy, in 2001.

Speaking with Variety ahead of this year’s special edition, Film Fest Ghent programme director Wim De Witte recalls the start of the WSA with the first-ever live concert by multiple Oscar-winning German composer Hans Zimmer. “We had an entire symphonic orchestra and choirs onstage; it was an amazing production and took a lot

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