2026 - Victor comme tout le monde, de Pascal Bonitzer
2026 - Maigret et le mort amoureux, de Pascal Bonitzer
2025 - Orwell: 2+2=5, de Raoul Peck
2024 - Ernest Cole, photographe, de Raoul Peck
2024 - Le Tableau volé, de Pascal Bonitzer
2019 - La Vérité, de Hirokazu Kore-eda
2017 - Le Jeune Karl Marx, de Raoul Peck
2012 - Cherchez Hortense, de Pascal Bonitzer
Alexei Aigui, born on 11 July 1971 in Moscow, is a Russian and French composer and violinist. He is the son of the distinguished poet Gennady Aigui (1934–2006), a native of Chuvashia whose work occupies an important place in contemporary Russian poetry.
After receiving a classical musical education, notably at the Ippolitov-Ivanov Music School in Moscow, he turned towards composition and contemporary music. In 1994, he founded the ensemble 4'33", whose name refers to the famous work by John Cage. The ensemble, which mainly performs his compositions, has developed an original musical style at the crossroads of minimalism, classical music, jazz and improvisation.
Alexei Aigui has collaborated with numerous Russian and international musicians, including Pierre Bastien, Dietmar Bonnen and Mina Agossi. He also composes for the theatre and has created musical accompaniments for several masterpieces of silent cinema, including Fritz Lang's Metropolis.
He began working in cinema in the 1990s and attracted particular attention with his score for Valery Todorovsky's film Land of the Deaf (Страна глухих, 1998). He subsequently composed music for numerous Russian films, including The Lover (Любовник, 2002), My Stepbrother Frankenstein (Мой сводный брат Франкенштейн, 2004), Wild Field (Дикое поле, 2008), The Horde (Орда, 2012) and Test (Испытание, 2014). His compositions have earned him several awards, notably the Nika Award for Best Music for Wild Field.
Based in France since the early 2000s, Alexei Aigui holds both Russian and French citizenship. For many years, he divided his life and musical activities between the two countries.
At the same time, he has developed an extensive career in French and international cinema, collaborating in particular with Pascal Bonitzer, Raoul Peck and Hirokazu Kore-eda. He composed the scores for Cherchez Hortense (2012), The Young Karl Marx (2017), The Truth (2019), Auction (Le Tableau volé, 2024) and Ernest Cole: Lost and Found (2024).
His work continued with Raoul Peck's Orwell: 2+2=5 (2025), followed by two films directed by Pascal Bonitzer, Maigret et le mort amoureux and Victor comme tout le monde (2026). His score for Orwell: 2+2=5 received an award at the 2025 Critics Choice Documentary Awards.
Having composed music for more than 70 films and television series, Alexei Aigui continues to work as a violinist, concert music composer and musical experimenter. His work is distinguished by a highly personal, often spare musical language, in which repetition, silence and instrumental timbres help create atmospheres of great expressive power.
