Icelandic composer Hildur Gudnadóttir will receive the career achievement award at the 21st Zurich Film Festival, Zurich announced Thursday. An Oscar winner for her score to Todd Phillips’ Joker, making her the first-ever solo female artist to win the Academy Award for best score, Gudnadóttir is also known for her music for Todd Field’s Tár (2022) and Kenneth Branagh’s A Haunting in Venice (2023) and for her Emmy-winning score for HBO’s Chernobyl (2019). She will be honored at the festival’s “Cinema in Concert” gala on Oct. 2.
“Hildur Gudnadóttir is one of the most innovative composers of our time,” said festival director Christian Jungen. “She knows how to use experimental sounds to shape mainstream pop culture and lend it atmospheric depth. She is an inquisitive musician who develops her scores in dialogue with the filmmakers and their sequences, creating melodies that you might not hum to yourself on the way home, but which resonate deep within us. … Her unmistakable style makes her a groundbreaking artist and a role model for many young talents worldwide.”
Guðnadóttir’s upcoming work includes scores for Nia DaCosta’s Hedda, a re-imagining of Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler, starring Tessa Thompson and Nina Hoss, and the back-to-back productions of 28 Years Later and 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, directed by Danny Boyle and DaCosta, respectively.
In Zurich, Gudnadóttir will take part in a festival masterclass and will serve as jury president for the Zurich festival’s 13th international film music competition. The competition, a joint effort of the Zurich Film Festival, Tonhalle-Gesellschaft Zürich, and Forum Filmmusik, sees young composers create original scores for the same animated short, Wild Love. Three finalists will have their work performed by the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich under the baton of Frank Strobel. Strobel, alongside Gudnadóttir and Swiss composer Balz Bachmann, will judge the winner, who will receive the CHF 10,000 ($12,700) Golden Eye award.
In addition to her film work, Gudnadóttir has composed for theater and dance and released four solo albums. Born in Reykjavík in 1982, she studied at the Reykjavík Music Academy and Berlin University of the Arts. She currently resides in Berlin.
