Hania Rani on Composing 'Sentimental Value' and Music as an Inherent Counterpoint
Joachim Trier’s latest masterpiece ‘Sentimental Value’ has won the Cannes Grand Prix and swept up awards at the European Film Awards, BIFA and Golden Globes. It has also received no less than eight nominations at this year’s Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Actress and Best Director.
Recorded between the iconic Abbey Road and Polish Radio studios, Hania Rani’s original music for the Cannes- winning film is a deeply intuitive collaboration, composed before a single frame was edited.
When asked about her work on the film, Hania Rani says, “Working on Sentimental Value was one of the most exciting artistic experiences in my life. As a composer, for most of the time you are a bit on the side of the process, yet you have an access to the most intimate moments of the director's own relationship with the body of work - observing closely how difficult decisions are made with each new edit, cut, choice. And to observe such an intelligent artist as Joachim at workis simply fascinating because his interest is never limited to only filmmaking but it reaches way, way further than a moving image.”
Interestingly, Hania worked on the score for Sentimental Value without an edit in hand; instead, she was given a carefully written script and the freedom of her own substantial imagination. “This way of composing suits me perfectly, as I’m not the type of composer who works comfortably with particular scenes, slightly immune to functionality in music in general. I prefer to ponder sound in separation from the image. It enables me to fabricate more abstract sequences that are not yet expressed in the film and to bring a new context to the existing narrative. Music as an inherent counterpoint - this sounds more intriguing to me”.
For Hania the biggest challenge of the score was its gravity - or rather its visibly elusive nature. The story told in the film oscillates around three characters and the motionless presence of the house, yet the relationships between all these personalities are not fixed, but in progress. Those subtle qualities were at the centre of her attention and became the core topic of numerous discussions with Joachim about the music, the film, and the philosophy behind Sentimental Value. “I wondered how to express such translucent virtues in this score; that’s why a great deal of the process was embedded in exercises of mediation and translation. In order to avoid directness, I decided to impure the sound with a succession of small sonic gestures - whether re-arranging, re-orchestrating, revisiting, stretching the duration, or simply recording in a new acoustic environment. The mediated sound and expression allowed me to model a soundscape that inhabits both the old and the new, much like the house, which holds within itself the past, present, and future”.
In September 2024, Hania went to Oslo and spent a couple of days in the main film location (the family home in Oslo) with her sound engineer, Agata Dankowska. The film crew was away in France to shoot another scene for the project, so they were allowed to freely explore the space - both visually and sonically. They made field recordings in the building, capturing the sounds of objects and furniture found in the apartment, and they also managed to record a couple of piano pieces. The house plays a significant role in the story, silently witnessing the tangled trajectories of its residents. “To explore its interiors so closely inevitably reminded me of getting to know a real person, with all their vulnerable parts and secrets. And although most of the recordings were not supposed to become part of the final soundtrack, I felt that this visit gave me access to another, far more intimate layer of the film, which immensely informed my composing process afterwards and reshaped my relationship with the project. There was a real sense of immediacy that felt exciting, instinctive, and simply incredibly special”.
‘Sentimental Value - the original score’ by Hania Rani is on Gondwana Records. Listen here.
Sentimental Value had its UK premiere on December 26th 2025, and is available to watch in selected cinemas.
Hania Rani is signed to publisher Bosworth Music, part of Wise Music Group. Her last release was ‘Non Fiction – a Piano Concerto in Four Movements’.
