Dhont, Berger and composers to headline Film Music Days talks
Two director-composer partnerships will take centre stage at the World Soundtrack Awards' Film Music Days on 8-10 October 2026. The programme will feature two talks that follow how a director and a composer shape a film's music together, according to Variety.
One talk pairs Belgian director Lukas Dhont with composer Valentin Hadjadj. They met as students. It is their third feature together after Girl and Close.
Their session is titled 'From Script to Sound: Crafting the Soundtrack to Lukas Dhont's Coward' and is listed for 10 October, according to World Soundtrack Awards. Coward is a First World War drama directed by Dhont. Dhont first pitched it to Hadjadj as "a musical about the repression of emotions".
That pitch shaped two jobs for Hadjadj. He arranged archival war songs and revue numbers, short stage-style performances, that appear on screen in the story. Many of those songs were first sung by actual soldiers in the trenches. He also wrote the score, the original music that runs under the drama.
For the score, he stepped away from broad, sweeping martial writing for full orchestra. He worked instead with a pop approach built on textures. Think layers of sound and colour rather than a large parade-ground ensemble.
The second talk brings together director Edward Berger and composer Volker Bertelmann. It is their sixth project together. Bertelmann prefers to start late. He likes to write to a nearly finished cut, meaning a version of the film that is close to its final shape, rather than joining early when scenes are still shifting.
Bertelmann won an Oscar for his reverb-heavy music for All Quiet on the Western Front. Reverb is the lingering echo effect that makes a sound feel vast or hollow. That blurred, ringing quality gave his war score its uneasy weight.
For fans, this means a close look at method. Expect talk about when a composer enters, what historical material can be used, and how texture can carry feeling where brass and drums might once have done the job.
Film Music Days runs alongside the awards concerts and industry events. Industry packages cover talks and masterclasses plus concerts on the days attended, according to World Soundtrack Awards. The 2026 awards are the 26th edition.
