The composer of Holy Spider, Martin Dirkov, and The Most Beautiful Boy in the World’s Anna von Hausswolff and Filip Leyman are among the nominees for this year’s awards.

After last year’s hybrid ceremony and the full online event in 2021, the Harpa Nordic Film Awards celebrating the most outstanding Nordic film composer of the year, will be handed out in-person at the Nordische Botschaften in Berlin on February 18, 2023, during the Harpa Nordic Film Music Days (February 18-19), held during the Berlinale.

This year’s five Nordic film composers nominees are the following:

  • Denmark’s Martin Dirkov for his score of Ali Abbasi’s Holy Spider.
    Dirkov who graduated from the National Film School of Denmark in 2011, has worked on Abbasi’s earlier films Shelley and Border, as well as Mila Alami’s The Charmer and the series When the Dust Settles.

    The Harpa Danish jury said Martin Dirkov “has created a complex and unconventional score for Ali Abbasi's intense psychological thriller Holy Spider…The music captures the suffocating sense of mortal fear, but manages simultaneously to be beautifully melodic and inventive, and credibly underlines the unpredictable and scary twists of the story.”
  • Finland’s Anna Mari Kähärä for her score of Susanna Helke’s documentary Ruthless Times-Songs of Care.
    Kähärä is a composer, musician and music producer for theatre and cinema. She did the soundtrack of Mika Kaurismäki’s The House of Branching Love and composed the music for several Jill & Joy films by Saara Cantell.

    The Finnish jury said Anna-Mari Kähärä's primitive, honest, and touching score breaks straight through the endurance deficits, statistics, and staff sizing of the modern eldercare. In Kähärä's music, the silent and silenced ones gain a voice so powerful and rugged that it hurts: it’s a cry for help and humanity of the generations.”
  • Iceland’s Eðvarð Egilsson and Páll Ragnar Pálsson for their score of Tinna Hrafnsdóttir’s film Quake.
    Egilsson is a composer and founding member of the group Steed Lord. After almost a decade spent in the US, he came back to Iceland and graduated in classic composition from Iceland University of the Arts. Pálsson did an undergraduate course at the Iceland Academy of the Arts and the did a PhD in composition in 2014 at Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre.

    The Iceland Harpa jury said “Páll Ragnar Pálsson and Eðvarð Egilsson know their music history, technique and evade all pitfalls that an unmeasured approach might invite. The music comes out of the main character and her inner self that is repressed and hidden. It becomes the voice of the neurons and the inner turmoil that in lesser hands might invite cliché upon cliché.”
  • Norway’s Jørund Fluge Samuelsen for his score of Hallvar Witzø’s Everybody Hates Johan.
    Fluge Samuelsen was a founder of the pop group Trang Fødsel in the 1990s. For the past 20 years, he has worked as a composer and producer of a wide range of Norwegian musicians.

    The Norwegian Jury said the music of Jørund Fluge Samuelsen “keeps the slapstick-style comedy of the film very much down to earth, and is always quite low-key, despite a few explosive moments…Beneath all the humour, there are some darker truths about what war does to people and how we retell stories from the war, with Samuelsen’s score adding quite a bit of afterthought.”
  • Sweden’s Anna von Hausswolff and Filip Leyman for their score of Kristian Petri and Kristina Lindström’s documentary The Most Beautiful Boy in the World.
    Von Hausswolff is a musician and composer, author of five albums. She composed the music for the award-winning Swedish documentary with Leyman.

    The Swedish jury said “the low-key, brilliant music by Anna von Hausswolff and Filip Leyman interweaves in a delicate way all the artistical film narratives in this striking documentary.”

This year’s jury for the 2023 Harpa Nordic Film Composers Award are last year’s winner Sanna Salmenkallio (Finland), Sophie Joos (Belgium), World Soundtrack Academy, composer Sung-woo Cho (South Korea), Festival Director of SoundTrack_Cologne Michael P. Aust (Germany), music supervisor Lucy Bright (UK) and composer Christine Aufderhaar (Germany).

The Nordic Film Music Days (NFMD) organised annually by the Nordic composer organisations, Music Norway, and Music Finland, with support from Nordische Botschaften and Nordisk Film & TV Fond.

For further details, check www.nordicfilmmusicdays.com