Directed by Davis Guggenheim (An Inconvenient Truth, It Might Get Loud), He Named Me Malala is a documentary about Pakistani Nobel Peace Prize laureate and girls' education advocate Malala Yousafzai, who was critically wounded by a gunshot on her way home from school at age 15, a target of the Taliban. The film's score, by award-winning composer
Thomas Newman (Skyfall,
American Beauty, Finding Nemo), tackles the profound subject matter with intimate strings, woodwinds, harp, and piano, as well as more percussive regional Asian influences and atmospheric female vocals ("I Am Malala," "Speak What Is in Your Soul"). Occasionally sentimental but mostly atmospheric and reverent, the score recording provides over 50 minutes of original music. ~ Marcy Donelson