Guðnadóttir for Best Original Score with Joker, The Cave directed by Feras Fayyad is running for Best Documentary.

Both Fayyad and Guðnadóttir are strong contenders in their respective categories. 

The Cave won the People’s Choice Documentary Award at the last Toronto Film Festival and Fayyad’s previous film Last Men in Aleppo was Oscar nominated in 2018. 

The Cave which follows the extraordinary work of Syrian female doctor Amani Ballour as she manages an underground hospital in Ghouta, outside Damascus, was produced by Kirstine Barfod and Sigrid Dyekjær for Danish Documentary, with co-financing from National Geographic Documentary Films, TV2 Denmark, and support among others from the Danish Film Institute. 

Dyekjær told nordicfilmandtvnews.com: “Feras came to us and said he wanted a production company run by strong women. I’m grateful that he approached us. What I find so strong in The Cave is the story of women in a patriarchal society fighting for their rights in the middle of a war zone. To hear from the women directly is new. It’s a personal and courageous portrait of women in the middle of a war that we’ve never seen before.” Both Danish Documentary and National Geographic are working on an impact campaign to help women in war zones, through the Al Amal ‘Hope’ Fund https://www.kbfcanada.ca/en/projects/al-amal-hope-fund/

The Cave is handled internationally by Dogwoof who released it in UK cinemas in December via their own theatrical distribution arm. It opened in Denmark on January 9, 2020.  The other documentaries competing at the Oscars are American Factory, The Edge of Democracy, For Sama and Honeyland.  

Hildur Guðnadóttir has just picked up a Critics’ Choice Award for her musical score for Todd Phillip’s film Joker, and won earlier this month a Golden Globe, making her the first female solo composer to win the prestigious Hollywood award.  The classically trained cellist is running at the Oscars against Alexandre Desplat for Little Women, Randy Newman for Marriage Story, Thomas Newman for 1917, and John Williams for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. 

Guðnadóttir’s name has been celebrated as well throughout 2019 for her outstanding composing work on HBO/Sky’s mini-series Chernobyl for which she won an Emmy Award.  She was a close collaborator to her co-national, the late Jóhann Jóhansson, twice Oscar nominated for Sicario and The Theory of Everything. 

She won two Icelandic Edda Awards for her scores to Baltasar Kormákur's feature The Oath (2017) and the TV series Trapped (2016).

The winners of the 92nd Academy Awards will be announced Sunday, February 9.