Kevin Macdonald’s feature film The Mauritanian, based on the New York Times best-selling memoir Guantanamo Diary, tells the true story of Mohamedou Ould Slahi, held captive and tortured by the U.S. government in Guantanamo Bay detention camp for 10 years without a charge or trial. He finds hope in defense attorney Nancy Hollander (Jodie Foster) and her associate Teri Duncan (Shailene Woodley), who face countless legal obstacles in their pursuit of justice. Benedict Cumberbatch stars as prosecutor Lt. Colonel Stuart Couch.

A few words on the main themes of Tom’s The Mauritanian soundtrack, first published on filmmusicinstitute.com…

“Sometimes I find that the themes can come out of the sound world you are building, and they gently present themselves to you. This was not the case here! I sat down at the piano and wrote a version of Mohamedou’s theme on the first evening of work. It went through a few iterations but broadly speaking that is basis for all of Mohemadou’s scenes. 

For Couch I did a string quartet sketch with that little rhythmical glitch which landed really nicely when I applied it to the opening sequence push to the title card. This is what really helped me get deep into the narrative actually, because I was able to jump ahead and manipulate the Couch material and start discovering in the process what journey the score was likely to take.

Nancy took a bit longer- it needed to be slightly more ‘straight ahead’ I guess, more typically legal thriller to start with. So of course you have to work much harder to try to make it not typical! I actually wrote the piano hook while Kevin was in the studio feeding back on what didn’t work from my first attempts! As luck would have it, he lives a short bike ride away, so he was able to come by a few times a week and we settled into a groove really nicely. I wouldn’t normally risk something like that with the director sitting and observing but we had a good dialogue and it seemed like the way to go in the moment!

The Guantanamo theme is better described as a sound world really. It’s not something that can be sat down and played at the piano. I came to this last. Building music through synthesis and processing and musical sound design is much slower, so it was helpful to have the other themes settled and ready to be dragged into the GTMO world and manipulated. “

The Mauritanian OST is available to stream everywhere now.