Award winning “Chernobyl” composer Hildur Guðnadóttir will be the guest of honour at the upcoming World Soundtrack Awards held during the Ghent Film Festival on October 10, 2026.

Guðnadóttir has emerged as one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary film scoring, reshaping the emotional language of cinema through sound. Born in Reykjavík, Iceland, into a musical family, she began studying cello at five before pursuing composition and new media in Iceland and Berlin, where she is now based.

HBO’s Chernobyl 

Her international breakthrough came with HBO’s Chernobyl (2019), a score built from industrial textures and environmental recordings that redefined sonic storytelling. The work earned her an Emmy, a Grammy, and the World Soundtrack Award for Television Composer of the Year—making her the first solo female composer to win the Grammy in this category.

Guðnadóttir cemented her place in film history with Joker (2020), crafting a visceral, cello-driven score that became integral to the film’s psychological intensity. Her work earned a Golden Globe, BAFTA, Critics’ Choice Award, and another Grammy, marking a record-breaking awards season for a female composer.

Wide-ranging body of soundtracks

Her versatility is evident across a wide-ranging body of work spanning film, television, and video games. Her credits include Sicario: Day of the Soldado, Mary Magdalene, TÁR, Women Talking, and A Haunting in Venice. She also co-composed the score for Battlefield 2042, which won a Society of Composers & Lyricists Award.

Recent projects continue to showcase her evolving voice, including Hedda, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, and Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Bride (2026). In 2025, she received a Career Achievement Award at the Zurich Film Festival.

Alongside her screen work, Guðnadóttir maintains an active recording career, with five solo albums that reflect her experimental roots. Across mediums, her work consistently challenges conventions—placing texture, atmosphere, and emotional resonance at the forefront of modern composition.

Practical

This year, the WSA Film Music Days will take place from 8 to 10 October 2026 in the Belgian town of Ghent. The World Soundtrack Awards Ceremony & Concert will be held on 10 October 2026 at Muziekcentrum de Bijloke. Tickets for the event are now available.

Discover Guðnadóttir on Spotify

Gudnadóttir on Amazon

(Michael Leahy. Photo: Jeroen Willems)

Composer Philippe Rombi was a guest of the World Soundtrack Awards in 2024. At a public masterclass, he talked about writing for drama for over an hour with a Belgian journalist.

This is essential listening for anyone interested in soundtracks.

Meanwhile, we can’t resist this extract from another interview with Cinezik, where he talks about writing electronic music.

Philippe Rombi on electronic music

Some people have studied synthesizers since childhood, they live with this sound, it’s a culture. So I’m very humble when I caress that palette. I go into it with respect, I work on it seriously. I prepared myself like a painter prepares a palette, I prepare a range of things ready to use.

Over the years, I became interested in electronics and started looking for sounds. I have a lot of respect for people who make electronic music, because there’s no such thing as bad music. To do it well, you just have to work at it, you need taste, an ear and a heart, in all styles of music. After that, of course, musical studies, classical training, learning to write for orchestra, all that takes years of study and work, which I’ve done, but electronic music also requires work.

Once I’d seen the images, I started arranging the sounds in my little laboratory. There’s a piece where there are maybe 12 synthetic string sounds that I mixed, equalized, tweaked, to give a deliberately false sound, not like a sample of real strings, I wanted a new sound. Like an alchemist, I put myself in my own bubble.

The real aim is to find the recipe that works with the film, and that’s the challenge I like every time, whether it’s a comedy, a drama or a thriller, it’s to find the right color… when people tell me on leaving the film that they can’t imagine the film with anything else, that’s the best reward!

More Rombi interviews here (in French).