Our Competition Nominees

Dorian Bonnardel

Dorian Bonnardel started music when he was 6 by playing percussions. Then when he was 12, learned harmony and Piano and started to compose his first pieces. After secondary education, he choose to engage in composition for screen in the Annecy Regional Conservatory.

He has learned orchestration, sound design and contemporary classical composition. "Studying all these subjects have made me better as a composer", he says. Bonnardel has composed many originals soundtracks for student animated short films.

Camille Borrelly

As a French self-taught woman, Camille Borrelly started playing with her voice, guitars and keyboards as a teenager out of passion for music and sounds. That led her to a Regional Conservatoire in France, where she studied classical guitar.

Then she studied at the university – where she passed a bachelor’s degree in English-, and at a National School of Music in classical guitar, singing and electroacoustic composition where she passed several certificates. Ever since, she has composed music for a web series, did the sound design for an audiobook and spent 7 years singing and composing for a local metal band.

Hernan Castro Fioravanti

Born and raised in Buenos Aires, Hernan Castro Fioravanti started playing guitar at the age of 12.

While studying electric guitar with several private teachers, he studied classical guitar at the Astor Piazzolla Conservatory. A few years later, he moved to Boston to attend the prestigious Berklee College of Music where he got a Bachelor's Degree in Film Scoring.

Since 2018, he lives in Utrecht, The Netherlands, where he works as a freelance media composer. Castro Fioravanti is currently doing a Master's Degree at HKU in Utrecht.

Guillaume Demore

Guitarist and a film buff since he was young, Guillaume Demore demonstrates his passion for film scoring very early on. He likes to explore different genres while keeping his classical training in mind.

Currently he is finishing his studies at the Royal College of Music of London. He works on all types of media such as movies, animation, commercials, theatre projects and videogames.

Jan Willem de With

Jan Willem de With is an award-winning German-Dutch film composer, producer, and musician currently based in London. His soundtracks and film productions have been internationally screened and performed at film festivals and events such as Cannes, London, New York. For some of his productions, he has collaborated with musicians and ensembles such as "The City Of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra” and Eurovision singer-songwriter Chiara Dubey.

Filmo:

-Shelter (2022)

-Abia (2022)

-The Phoenix (2022)

-Little Fantasies (2022)

-Go Binge or Go Home (2021) -Lose Your Way (2021)

-The Carer (2021)

-My Dream, My Taste (2020) -The Weight of the Land (2019)

Marco Falcon Medrano

Born in Lima, Perú and grew up in a rich musical environment of traditional folk music. Marco Falcon Medrano began his studies in Percussion at the National Conservatory of Music in Lima. He concentrated on classical music and world music before paying more attention to jazz; in order to continue his studies at the age of 18 he moved to Milan to study at the Conservatory of Music G. Verdi where he graduated with a bachelor’s degree summa cum laude.

In the last few years he has performed at many festivals, given concerts and recorded for radio and streaming television, as well as music for dance productions, radio plays and film music.

In 2018 he won a scholarship for an undergraduate program at Berklee School of Music.

In 2019 he won the "Berklee Umbria Jazz Award" at the Clinics of the Berklee School of Music, this award gives him the opportunity to perform at the twenty-seventh edition of Umbria Jazz Winter.

In 2021 he won the 1st prize in the contest ‘National Arts Award’ (Premio Nazionale delle Arti) and joined the Jazz National Orchestra (ONJ) as a drummer and percussionist.

In 2022 he works as an arranger and performer for a research project of the ‘Music and Acoustic Engineering’ department of the Politecnico di Milano.

In 2023 he won a scholarship for a graduate program at Berklee College of Music.

Recently Marco has been working on his own compositions and touring with the Italian Hip-Hop/Jazz collective ‘Studio Murena’.

Ros Gilman

Ros is a classically trained German-British composer, music producer, conductor and musician, educated at the University of Music, Vienna and the Royal College of Music, London. He holds a Master’s Degree in Composition for Film, a Bacherlor’s Degree in Classical Composition, a Diploma in Concert Violin and a Diploma in Music Business.

His work has received several awards and nominations, among others the Fimucinema Award at Tenerife International Film Music Festival, the Audience Award at British Animation Film Festival, the Movie Music Award at Garden State International Film Festival as well as nominations at International Sound and Film Music Festival, Pasadena International Film Festival, Jerry Goldsmith Awards and others.

Ros’ composer credits include the HBO Original series Folklore, two theatrical feature films, two prime-time TV documentaries (ARTE, France 5) and a dozen short films. Ros started his career as an orchestrator, working on 7 primetime feature films for German public broadcast TV channel ZDF. Ros' music has enjoyed great support on streaming platforms with over 13 million streams and repeated editorial support from Spotify, Apple Music and Pandora as well as major radio stations (playlisting on BBC 4 Radio, BBC 3 Classic Radio, NDR Kultur Radio) and the press (BBC Music Magazine, Times Series). He regularly appears on podcasts and industry blogs as well as a speaker at expert panels (such as MCM London Comic Con).

Originally trained as a concert violinist, Ros performed on three continents as well as on national TV and radio (ABC Australia, Kanal 1 Bulgaria, O1 Austria). A hand injury abruptly ended his violin career and Ros shifted his focus to composing and conducting. As a conductor Ros has repeatedly worked with the Macedonian Symphonic Orchestra (FAME's Project), the Prague Metropolitan Orchestra and others, and in recent years has been able to resume playing the violin and recorded the solo violin parts for several of his own scores.

CREDITS

The Entertainer (2023) – Feature (Composer) - Post Prod
Breaking Mirrors (2023) – Feature (Composer) - Post Prod
The Wedding Veil of the Proud Princess - Short (Composer, Conductor, Solo Violinist) - Post Prod
The Last Cloudweaver (2022) – Short (Composer, Conductor)

HBO Original "Folklore" (2018-2021) - TV Mini Series (Composer, Solo Violinist)
Ways of Keeping (2020) – Short (Composer)

The Arrival (2018) – Short (Composer, Violinist)

Les Enfants de Daech (2017) – TV Documentary (Composer)
 Johanne (2017) – Short (Composer, Conductor)

Die Migrantingen (2017) – Feature (Additional Music)
 Motherhood (2016) – Short (Composer, Violinist)

Paris est une cible (2016) – TV Documentary (Composer)
 Rosanunde Pilcher (2013 – 2016) – TV film (Orchestrator)

Sudden (2014) – Short (Composer)

Teddybär (2014) – Short (Composer)

Salsa di Amor (2013) – Short (Composer)

Fragments: A Dream of David Clay Diaz (2013) – Short (Composer)

Tuppern (2013) – Short (Composer)

Johann Grillenbeck

Johann Grillenbeck is a multi-instrumentalist composer and producer currently based in Würzburg, Germany. He is currently enrolled in the MA Professional Media Composition program at ThinkSpace Education while producing under his alias Monĕsk and playing guitar with RC-Plane. His latest project was providing video game music to the start-up 4Hats, which is financially supported by FFF Bayern and the budgetary funds of the Free State of Bavaria.

In 2022 the music of Monĕsk reached 3.800 listeners in 102 countries on Spotify, being added to 415 Playlists on the platform. The track Amoenus was featured on the ARTBAT-Playlist and Your Melody received airplay via Bayern 3.

Lukas Günther

Lukas Günther is a multi-award-winning german film score composer working near Hamburg and Frankfurt. He started studying for his Bachelor of Music at the renowned Musicconservatory of Lübeck MHL in 2018 and continued studying Motion Pictures to build up on his filmscoring experience.

His diverse repertoire ranges from live-recorded full orchestral scores to pure production music or small intimate ensembles.

He has been composing and producing for several projects such as the critically acclaimed Filmuni KONRAD WOLF graduation film "Die Lüge" (directed by Can Tanyol, ZDF), the horror film "Die Drud" (directed by Florian Ecker, Bayerischer Jugendfilmpreis) and the cyberthriller "CR3AM PI3" (directed by Gianluca Pistoia, Flugmodus TV). He also composed the score for the HFF München graduation documentary "Angelique" (directed by Elisabeth Kratzer, HFF Filmproduction).

When working on a new film score, he mainly operates with Cubase Pro12 and uses professional VST Librarys from Spitfire Audio, Vienna Symphonic Library, Orchestral Tools etc.. His Recording Studio is qualified with professional audio gear, such as Beyerdynamic Sennheiser microphones for Recording and DT990 Pro headphones. Depending on the type of film project, Lukas Günther engages several instrumentalists, orchestrators and audio engineers to record parts of the film score.

Emily Hawkins

Emily is a Berlin-based media composer from the UK at the beginning of her career. Her passion for composing started at a very young age, writing short pieces for cello and piano when she should have been practicing. At 17, her piano pieces were used on UK TV shows such as Masterchef and Made in Chelsea, but it wasn't until over a decade later that she finally pursued her dream of becoming a media composer.

After graduating with a first class honours Bachelor of Music from Newcastle University, specialising in composition and early music, Emily took an extended break from music while she taught English and German as foreign languages. In September 2022, she finally completed an MA in Professional Media Composition with ThinkSpace Education, graduating as one of only 7 students to ever achieve the award of 'distinction'.

Emily enjoys working across a broad range of media and genres, but is happiest when she gets to write emotional melodies.

Daniel Heinemann

Daniel Heinemann is 28 years old and has been playing piano since childhood. In 2016 he started studying audio design, which he successfully completed in 2019.

Since then he has been steadily producing beats for German rappers, among others. His greatest passion and inspiration is film music.

"Hans Zimmer is my biggest role model and I hope that if I win this competition I will be able to realize my dream of becoming a film musician", he says.

Thomas Judge

Born in 1995 in Paris, Thomas Judge has a dual French and American nationality.

Judge has an advanced musical training as a drummer and percussionist from the Conservatory of Toulouse (France) and the Haute Ecole de Musique de Genève (Switzerland) where he also studied musical composition for films.

He has worked both as a teacher and a performer, including for a number of major European orchestras. He is currently based in the South of France.

Michael Kaspar

Michael Kaspar is a 21-year-old Audio Design student from the south of Germany living in Berlin.

Besides playing the trumpet and the piano, he is composing different genres of music. His long-term goal is to become a professional film composer and a sound designer. Nevertheless, he is exploring several other fields such as sound engineering and music informatics.

Ana Krstajic

Ana Krstajic was born in Belgrade, Serbia. She graduated at Faculty of Music Art in Composition and Orchestration (M.M. Serbia) and at Berklee College of Music, Scoring for Film, TV and Video Games department (M.M. Spain)

In 2014 she won 1st Prize at the Young Composer Competition “Women’s Works” (Ithaca, NY). In 2016 she won 2nd Prize at the International Composer Competition “De Bach au Jazz” (Paris, FR) in category Contemporary Piano, same year she won 1st Prize at “The Best Musical Mind” International Music Competition, (Belgrade, SR) which brought her full scholarship for Berklee Summer Performance Program (Valencia, ESP). She won Honorary Mention at Soundtrack Cologne festival in 2018, in 2021 she won Hollywood Music in Media Award (Los Angeles, CA) in Orchestral category for her piece “Our Land”. Since 2019 she is Cultural Ambassador of Serbia Creates platform. She was selected for Alliance for  Women film Composers and Society of Composer’s and Lyricist mentoring session in 2022. She is currently working on several Film, TV and Theater productions in Serbia, and composing additional music for an Apple TV animated shorts collection. She is currently an Artist in residence at Kolarac Concert Hall in Belgrade.

Jonathan Laskar

Born in 1978, Jonathan Laskar studied visual arts at the University of Aix-en-Provence (France), classical double bass at the Conservatory of Aix-en-Provence and architecture at the Bauhaus-University of Weimar (Germany). After working three years as architect in Basel, Jonathan Laskar graduated the master «Animage» at the Lucerne University with the animated short film «De terre et d’encre», produced by Claude Barras. Since 2013, he works in Geneva with Georges Schwizgebel and Claude Luyet, as well as an independent animation filmmaker.

Filmography (direction)

2022 The Record Direction (debut film) + Music composition

2013 De terre et d’encre Direction + animation (graduation film)

Filmography (artistic and technical collaboration)

2023 D’une Peinture à l’Autre by G. Schwizgebel +Compositing

2022 Lucky Man by Claude Luyet Production assistant + Compositing

2020 Darwin’s Notebook by Georges Schwizgebel Compositing

2019 Newspaper News by Sophie Laskar-Haller Production + Animation + Compositing

2018 Around the Stairway
Production (collaborative project)

2017 San-Romano by Georges Schwizgebel Compositing

2016 Le vent dans les Roseaux by Nicolas Liguori Animation (cut out digital)

2016 Le fil d’Ariane by Claude Luyet Compositing + Visual effects + Editing

2015 Erlkönig by Georges Schwizgebel Postproduction + End credits

Martin Lemoine

Martin Lemoine is a French composer, songwriter with a Bachelor's degree in Performing Arts in Cinema.

During his studies, Lemoine began his first instrumental compositions inside a theatre company he joined. His first composition for a Flemish short film, Onvoltooid Verleden Tijd, made him win two prizes at festivals for "Best Composer" and "Best Soundtrack".

Since the beginning of 2022, he has composed for various projects such as short-films, podcasts and a documentary. More recently, he has been chosen to compose the trailer of an upcoming mobile game called "Iron Siege", as well as the music for a car company.

Rens Machielse

Rens Machielse plays all kinds of keyboards. He was also director of HKU Music and
Technology (HKU University of the Arts Utrecht), wrote the book The Sound Track, is
part of IMMSANE (www.immsane.com), and produces the online platform for Dutch
media composers: www.privatekitchen.nl .

Both Rens Machielse and Willem Schneider have long and award-winning careers as a
composers and sound designers for theatre, moving images and interactive experiences.
Over the years they have worked together on more than two hundred projects.

A short overview of their work can be found on:
http://www.masch.nl/Producties.html
https://rensmachielse.nl/

Louison Pugin

Coming from the French Alps, Louison Pugin is a trombonist, a sound designer and a music composer especialized in short films and video games. He is a student at the University of Lyon 2 in MAAAV (Musiques Appliquées Aux Arts Visuels) and at the music conservatory of Villeurbanne.

His language is fed of several influences from the classical to electronic and jazz music. He uses instrument recordings and designed electronic sounds as tools for his compositions.

Arezou Rezaei

Arezou Rezaei is an Iranian composer living in Germany since 2017. She composes for concert, film and theater.

She received her bachelor's degree in composition from the State University of Music and Performing Arts Stuttgart, and is currently studying composition for film and media at the University of Music and Theater Munich.

She has won different composition commissions and her pieces have been performed by various musicians. She is one of the winners of the Tehran Electronic Music Festival.

Willem Schneider

Willem Schneider is originally a guitarist from The Hague, also known as Beat City nr.1
of the Netherlands. By playing in different bands and building his own instruments and
sound equipment, Willem developed into a well-known sound designer, composer, and
studio owner (www.masch.nl).

Both Rens Machielse and Willem Schneider have long and award-winning careers as a
composers and sound designers for theatre, moving images and interactive experiences.
Over the years they have worked together on more than two hundred projects.

A short overview of their work can be found on:
http://www.masch.nl/Producties.html
https://rensmachielse.nl/

Pavel Sitnikov

Pavel Sitnikov was born in Moscow and moved to Cologne in September 2022, where he studies MA Digital Narratives in IFS Internationale Filmschule Köln.

Sitnikov has a bachelor's degree in Sound Design at the Gerasimov’s Russian State Institute of Filmmaking (VGIK) in Moscow. He has worked as a sound designer in the post-production studio “Atmosfera” in Moscow. There he was able to contribute to productions as a dialogue editor, sound effects editor, sound designer, ADR recordist and foley recordist.

Tran Quoc Kim Vu

Growing up, music did not play a part on Vu's life; until he played Final Fantasy VII on the Playstation 1. In school, he cared only about music and games. Still, he went to law school afterwards.

After Tran Quoc Kim Vu graduated from law school, he decided against a career in law, and went back to school, this time, to the music school.

Until today, he enjoyed creating stories and worlds the most. Sounds are building blocks of stories and worlds. Video games are worlds. And video games need sound. So now, he does sound design.