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Panu Aaltio is a film composer based in Helsinki and Los Angeles. He has composed music to over 30 feature films, multiple TV series and video games, as well as a full-length ballet for the Finnish National Opera.
His most recent projects include the third installment of the family adventure film series, Super Furball and the Lying Squirrel, the Netflix original film Little Siberia, as well the drama film about mental illness and homelessness 5000 Blankets starring Anna Camp, released by Sony Pictures Entertainment.
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 Lakein 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 nominated by the IFMCA as Composer of the Year in 2022, alongside Hans Zimmer, James Newton Howard, Jonny Greenwood and Nicholas Britell.
In 2026 he won the HARPA Nordic Film Composers Award for his score the Netflix original film Little Siberia.
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, 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.