Hans Michael Anselmo Hess is an award-winning Brazilian-born British film composer, known for his melodic orchestral style and boundary-pushing experimentation. He believes that great film music should forge a meaningful and emotional rhetoric with the narrative, guiding the audience through story and feeling in a deeply immersive way.

His work blends traditional orchestration with hybrid scoring techniques, often drawing from his classical guitar roots. Hans is particularly drawn to the emotional and psychological power of music in film, and his love for genre hybridisation is at the core of his creative ethos. By combining orchestral writing with sound design, ambient textures, and electronic elements, he crafts scores that are bold, evocative, and tailored to the unique needs of each project.

Hans has composed original music for a wide range of films, including Space Goblins (in production), Advent – A Christmas Anthology, You Are My Sunshine, Sustain, Clownface, Carnival of Sorrows, and Consequence. His score for Clownface earned him multiple awards and allowed him to explore a rich palette of unsettling soundscapes, thematic motifs, and classical guitar textures — a creative process he describes as both collaborative and deeply fulfilling.

Beyond film, Hans is a prolific producer of production music, contributing full-length albums to labels such as BMG Production Music, Figure And Groove, Atom Music, Dos Brains, Wrong Planet, Amadea Music, Bleach Productions, Muchas Music, Gargantuan Music, Felt Music and more. He also collaborates as a freelance composer with agencies like Da House Audio, Squeak E Clean and Made by Ikigai.

Currently, Hans is scoring his first video game, a cinematic narrative adventure supported by the UK Game Fund. The project focuses on memory, emotional connection, and father-son dynamics, and features dramatic boss-fight sequences and a richly atmospheric score.

Hans’s musical journey began on the recorder but was soon shaped by his brothers’ passion for heavy metal. Inspired by different heavy metal bands, he took up electric guitar before discovering the classical guitar and falling in love with the music of Leo Brouwer and Brazilian composers. He pursued a BA in Music with an emphasis on guitar performance at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil. In 2006, he moved to the UK, completing a Master’s in Composition of Music for Film and Television at the University of Bristol, followed by a PhD in Film Musicology with a focus on the use of Samba in Brazilian cinema.

Alongside his industry work, Hans is also an academic deeply committed to nurturing the next generation of creatives. He currently serves as Course Leader for the BA (Hons) Music & Sound for Film & TV and Sound Design degrees at dBs Institute-Bristol Campus, where he helps students explore both the technical and artistic challenges of film scoring. He sees education as a space for experimentation, critical thinking, and identity-building, and is passionate about preparing students for the evolving realities of the film, TV, and game industries.

Hans is represented by The Max Steiner Agency.