Enis Rotthoff

It starts with the film, not the music.

Films

Enis scored Trigger Warning for Netflix, starring Jessica Alba – number one worldwide in the week it launched, with more than 90 million views in its first six months – and Sun and Concrete, which went from the Berlinale to number one in German cinemas. He wrote the music for Wolfgang Petersen’s heist film Four Against the Bank and has made five films with David Wnendt, among them Wetlands, Look Who’s Back, The Sunlit Night and Sun and Concrete. Guns Akimbo premiered in Toronto; Measuring the World brought a Jerry Goldsmith Award nomination. In between: family films like Free Willy and Lassie, a Wall Street drama, a British bakery and a few psychological thrillers.

Method

Enis loves feature films. He works like a method actor: into the film’s world, into the filmmaker’s vision, and the music is written from inside.

Instruments

Orchestra and modular synthesis played as one. Retro analogue synths. Acoustic instruments through guitar amps. Custom-built instruments, and familiar ones in places they have never been. Sounds nobody has heard before – and sounds that touch.

Recording musicians

Measuring the World was recorded with the Radio Symphony Orchestra Vienna and violinist Kolja Blacher, Four Against the Bank with the City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra and Big Band and Till Brönner on trumpet, Look Who’s Back with the Film Orchestra Babelsberg. Trigger Warning and Love Sarah were recorded in Budapest, The Sunlit Night with a string orchestra in Berlin.

Journey

Enis was born in Berlin. A scholarship for young composers led to seven years of working and studying with his mentor, Academy Award winner Jan A.P. Kaczmarek, on films including Finding Neverland and Unfaithful. Enis studied audiovisual communication at the University of the Arts Berlin and film music at the Film University Babelsberg, one of the first four students in its film-music course. He was a Sundance Composers Lab Fellow and received the German Music Authors’ Prize. After fifteen years in Los Angeles he lives and works in both cities, with a studio in each.

Origins

Around age eleven, Enis came home from the cinema and replayed melodies from the scores and soundtracks from memory – a game that grew into a scholarship for young composers. Star Wars was the film that made him want to become a film composer. All he wanted was to learn and understand this hidden language of music in films.