Panu Aaltio (born January 29, 1982) is a Finnish film composer. He was educated at the Sibelius Academy and University of Southern California and established himself as a film composer with The Home of Dark Butterflies (2008). He has received the International Film Music Critics Association Award for Best Original Score for a Documentary three times, for Tale of a Forest (2012), Tale of a Lake (2016) and Tale of the Sleeping Giants (2021). Panu Aaltio was born in Nurmijärvi on 29 January 1982. Wanting to become a film composer, he studied music technology at the Sibelius Academy in Finland, attended the Scoring for Motion Pictures and Television program at the University of Southern California and worked as an intern on film and television productions in Los Angeles. After returning to Finland, he became established there as a composer for feature films, television series and video games. The first feature film he composed a score for was The Home of Dark Butterflies (2008), for which he was nominated for the Jussi Award for Best Music. Aaltio composed the music for a trilogy of nature films produced by MRP Matila Röhr Productions, Tale of a Forest (2012), Tale of a Lake (2016) and Tale of the Sleeping Giants (2021). For both Tale of a Forest and Tale of a Lake he received the International Film Music Critics Association Award for Best Original Score for a Documentary. Tale of a Lake also received the Jussi Award for Best Music.
