Info

Panu Aaltio is a film composer based in Helsinki and Los Angeles. He has composed music to 30 feature films, multiple TV series and video games, as well as a full-length ballet for the Finnish National Opera.

Recent films scored by Panu include the drama based on a true story, 5000 Blankets starring Anna Camp, family adventure Super Furball Saves The Future, horror film The Twin, starring Teresa Palmer and Steven Cree, the anachronistic startup comedy in the 17th century The Potato Venture, as well as Finders of the Lost Yacht, a swashbuckling adventure on the Baltic Sea.

Awards

His emotional nature film scores have made Panu the only composer to have won the Best Documentary Score award from the The International Film Music Critics Association for each film in a trilogy. First with Tale of a Forest in 2013, then Tale of a Lake in 2017, for which Panu also received Finland’s equivalent of the Oscar, and finally in 2022 for Tale of the Sleeping Giants.

Panu Aaltio was also nominated by the IFMCA as Composer of the Year in 2022, alongside Hans Zimmer, James Newton Howard, Jonny Greenwood and Nicholas Britell.

Background

A cellist from the age of six, Panu Aaltio later studied Music Technology at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki,  Finland, and moved to Los Angeles in 2005 to attend the Scoring for Motion Pictures and Television program at the University of Southern California.

For his first solo feature work, The Home of Dark Butterflies, featuring the song Forgiveness which has been streamed millions of times in 2023 alone, Panu Aaltio received a Finnish Oscar nomination in 2008. His next feature, the horror film Sauna in 2008, premiered at the Toronto Film Festival and was picked up for distribution by IFC Films. Since then he has been one of Finland's most prolific film composers.