Andrea Guerra

Andrea Guerra was born in October 1961 in the northern Italian town of Santarcangelo di Romagna. After studying composition and arrangement under maestro Ettore Ballotta, he moved to Rome where he began his career composing music for nature documentaries.



He soon turned his hand to film music, writing his first score for the 1990 movie Viaggio d'Amore starring Omar Sharif and Lea Massari.
Since then, Guerra has written more than 60 scores and worked with a host of directors from Italy and abroad including Terry George, Griffin Dunne, Zhang Yuan, Gabriele Muccino, Ferzan Ozpetek, Marco Bechis, Giuseppe Bertolucci, Roberto Fazenza, Giuseppe Ferrara and Pepe Danquart.

Over the past year, Guerra has worked on several major projects, including:

* The Accidental Husband, a romantic comedy by New York filmmaker and actor Griffin Dunne featuring Uma Thurman, Colin Firth and Jeffrey Dean Morgan;
* Dada’s Dance, a love drama by cult Chinese director Zhang Yuan;
* Birdwatchers, a film by Italy’s Marco Bechis examining tribal extinction in the Brazilian jungle;
* A Perfect Day, a multiple-strand drama set during the course of 24 hours in modern-day Rome by Turkish helmer Ferzan Ozpetek;
* Pa-ra-da, a film based on the true story of French-Algerian clown Miloud’s bid to help homeless children living in the sewers beneath Bucharest’s main railway station.

Birdwatchers and A Perfect Day will be competing for the top prize at the upcoming Venice Film Festival while Marco Pontecorvo’s Pa-ra-da will be screened in the festival’s Horizons section dedicated to cutting-edge cinema.

In 2006, Guerra composed the music for the Hollywood box office hit The Pursuit of Happyness, a rags-to-riches drama starring Will Smith and directed by Gabriele Muccino.

Prior to that, he worked on Hotel Rwanda (2004), an acclaimed film about the Rwandan genocide by Terry George. The score won Guerra the European Film Award for best composer. He also co-wrote the film's closing song Million Voices with Haitian-American hip-hop star Wyclef Jean and composer Jerry Duplessis, for which he was nominated for a Golden Globe and a Grammy Award.

Guerra won the David di Donatello - Italy's equivalent of an Oscar - for the score to Ferzan Ozpetek's La Finestra di Fronte (Facing Windows, 2003). The soundtrack album has sold more than 75,000 copies to date, earning a Gold Record Award, while the film’s original song Gocce di Memoria written with Italian singer Giorgia became a hit single in Italy, selling more than 120,000 copies. Gocce di Memoria won a Platinum Record Award while Guerra clinched two Italian Music Awards, one for best composition and another for best arrangement.

The soundtrack for Ozpetek's previous movie Le Fate Ignoranti (His Secret Life/The Ignorant Fairies) was another success, selling more than 45,000 copies and winning both the Italian Music Award and the prestigious Flaiano Award for best score.

Guerra picked up two further awards for his score to Vincenzo Marra's Neapolitan drama Tornando a Casa (Returning Home, 2001): the Saint-Vincent Grolla d'Oro award for best composer and the Valencia Film Festival award for best music.

He has also won the Nino Rota prize for the 'high artistic quality' of his scores while in 2003, his music for the TV wartime drama La Guerra è Finita (The War is Over) by Lodovico Gasparini bagged the Golden FIPA for best original score at the Biarritz International Festival of Audiovisual Programming, Europe's top television awards.

Major Awards:

1. European Film Award 2005 - best composer (Hotel Rwanda)
2. Golden Satellite Award 2005 - best original song (Million Voices from Hotel Rwanda, shared with Wyclef Jean and Jerry ‘Wonder’ Duplessis)
3. Apex Award 2005 - best original song (Million Voices)
4. Ravello CineMusic 2004 - best song (Che Ne Sara' di Noi)
5. David di Donatello 2003 - best composer (La Finestra di Fronte)
6. Globo d'Oro 2003 - best score (La Finestra di Fronte)
7. Ciak d'Oro 2003 - best score (La Finestra di Fronte)
8. Nastro D'Argento 2003 - best song (Gocce di Memoria)
9. Italian Music Award 2003 - best musical composition (Gocce di Memoria)
10. Italian Music Award 2003 - best arrangement (Gocce di Memoria)
11. Premio Rota 2003 for high artistic quality
12. Golden FIPA 2003 - best score (La Guerra è Finita)
13. Flaiano Film Festival 2001 - best score (Le Fate Ignoranti)
14. Italian Music Award 2001 - best score (Le Fate Ignoranti)
15. Grolla d'Oro 2001 - best composer (Tornando a Casa)
16. Valencia Film Festival 2001 - best score (Tornando a Casa)

Nominations:

1. David di Donatello 2008 - best original song (Tear Down These Houses from Parlami d’Amore, shared with Skin)
2. Grammy award 2005 - best song written for motion picture (Million Voices)
3. Golden Globe 2005 - best original song for motion picture (Million Voices)
4. World Soundtrack Award - best original song written for film (Million Voices)
5. Fennecus Award 2005 - best original song (Million Voices)
6. David di Donatello 2005 - best composer (Cuore Sacro)
7. David di Donatello 2004 - best composer (Che Ne Sara' di Noi)
8. Globo d'Oro 2003 - best score (Prendimi L’Anima)