Philippe Rombi

Philippe Rombi discovered his passion for film scores through his brother's record collection and pursued formal training at conservatories in Marseille and Paris. Throughout a three-decade career, he developed close collaborations with French director François Ozon on more than a dozen films while earning multiple César nominations for films, including Merry Christmas and In the House. Rombi was born in 1968, in Pau in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques region of southwest France. Growing up in a musical family, he developed early exposure to diverse musical traditions. His brother's record collection introduced him to film composers, particularly John Williams's orchestral works for Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. His formal training began at the Conservatoire National de Région in Marseille, where he studied piano with Pierre Barbizet and harmony with Léa Roussel. Following his Marseille studies, he pursued advanced composition training at the École Normale Supérieure de Musique in Paris under Antoine Duhamel. His professional career began with composing scores for student films at La Fémis. In 1999, he completed his first feature film score, Les Amants Criminels, directed by François Ozon. This collaboration launched a sustained artistic partnership that would extend across a number of films. Between 1999 and 2023, Rombi and Ozon worked together on such films as Sous le Sable (2000), Jeune et Jolie (2013), and Mon Crime (2023), among others. Beyond his Ozon collaborations, Rombi achieved success with Christian Carion's Une Hirondelle a fait le Printemps (2001) and Joyeux Noël (2005), the latter earning him a César nomination in 2006. Throughout his career, he accumulated four César nominations. In 2008, his score for Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis received a nomination at the International Film Music Critics Association Awards. His work spans comedies, dramas, and character studies, films exploring French society and human relationships. In 2022 and 2023, he composed scores for Le Temps des Secrets among other films, maintaining an active creative schedule. In 2026, Rombi released the Adventure Way Symphonic Suite, site-specific music for DisneyLand Paris, recorded with the London Symphony Orchestra at Abbey Road Studios. ~ Prince Iwundu, Rovi