German composer Volker Bertelmann is no stranger to crafting scores that keep audiences, and even himself, up at night. “Yeah, I can’t sleep,” he jokes after being on the awards circuit with Edward Berger’s religious thriller Conclave last year while also working on the score for Berger’s next film, Ballad of a Small Player. Then he got the call that Kathryn Bigelow ( The Hurt Locker , Zero Dark Thirty ) wanted to meet to discuss her newest project, A House of Dynamite .

“Straightaway, I recognized that she’s very precise and she gives you a lot of time,” Bertelmann says of his first meeting with Bigelow. “I received a script, and it was really good. It was right up my alley because there was a lot of tension, but it was also very intelligently made.”

German composer Volker

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