Elia Cmiral

Elia Cmiral is the son of an actress and a theater director. From his early childhood Elia was drawn to creative arts; drawing, writing stories and poetry, photography, writing songs and playing different instruments. His interest in music grew and he attended the Prague Music Conservatory, where he studied composition and double bass.

By the early 80’s, Cmiral moved to Sweden, continuing to write scripts and short stories, and composing scores for several European films, TV and three ballets, two of them which he also produced.

In 1989 Elia received an artist award to study in America where he attended USC’s Scoring for Motion Pictures and Television program. His year at USC culminated with the scoring of his first American feature, “Apartment Zero” starring Colin Firth.

Over the next decade, Elia continued building a reputation for himself in Sweden and in America. His musical style combines contemporary electronica with the modern orchestra, joining cutting edge technology and production with evocative and haunting melodic themes.

His first studio feature, John Frankenheimer’s suspense thriller “Ronin”, earned him the Movieline Young Hollywood Award for Best Soundtrack of 1998, the International Film Music Critics award for Breakthrough Film Composer of the Year as well as a nomination for the Best Original Score for an Action Film.

To date Elia has written nearly seventy scores for independent films, TV and major studios including “Stigmata”, the trilogy “Pulse”, “Wrong Turn”, “Journey to the End of the Night”, and “The Deaths of Ian Stone” produced by Stan Winston. For the score for “Splinter”, a cutting edge horror film directed by Toby Wilkins, Elia received the Best Score Award at the Screamfest ’08 film festival in Los Angeles. For his work on “Lost Boys – The Thirst”, he was nominated for the Golden Reel.

Elia worked with the Czech director Juraj Herz on the score for the German/Czech produced film “Habermann”. The movie is a WWII drama that won the top prize at the 7th “Jewish Eye” Film Festival in Ashkelon, Israel. “Spec Ops: The Line”, a video game by German-based developer Yeager and 2K, is another project of Elia’s that featured rock music and grunge.

He wrote the orchestral scores for “Atlas Shrugged Part 1 and 3”, based on Ayn Rand’s novel, the hybrid score for the action/thriller “Armed Response” with Wesley Snipes, collaborated with the director Mark Young for five projects including “Feral” and “Limbo”, and a period drama “Running For Grace” from the 1920’s in Hawaii directed by David Cunningham starring Matt Dillon. For the Polish director Renata Gabryjelska and her feature drama “Safe Inside”, Elia wrote a dramatic score for a chamber orchestra.

Elia was one of twenty-four Hollywood composers writing/producing “A Symphony of Hope”, which is on sale to benefit victims of the Haiti earthquake disaster.

Besides film scores Elia continues writing scripts, poetry and chamber music. He wrote and produced an album for four piano trios based on his film scores released on the Swedish label, Moviescoremedia.

He finished two large orchestra concert suites for solo pan flute and symphonic orchestra: a composition dedicated to the Romanian virtuoso Gheorghe Zamfir, who will play the premier of the suites.

This year, by reflecting to the world pandemic crises, Elia wrote a composition for a string quartet and electronica, “Altered Mind of 20-20”. Based on his own score he wrote a synopsis for the short film with the same name. The film was shot in Prague, Czech Republic.