Jan Šléška is a film composer based in the Czech Republic. He doesn't deliver tracks — he defines the dramaturgy of the score first: what the music is doing in the narrative, and when.
He has spent his whole life exploring music and sound, in traditional ways and unconventional ones, and found early on that the fusion of sound and image was what he was made for. Film music has been through several technological upheavals in a hundred years, and each time the same things survived: taste, authorship, trust, and the willingness to stand behind a decision. That is what his work is built on.
He looks at a film as a musical whole — where music belongs and where it deliberately stays silent, what carries information and what carries emotion, how the architecture holds across the full running time, and how music meets sound design and silence. On most productions he is the only person thinking about music in the timeframe of the entire film rather than a single scene. After enough projects, he has developed a sharp instinct for what a scene actually needs, and for the third dimension music can add to a picture by saying what goes unsaid.
Every project turns out unlike the one before it. The brief is never the same twice, because the essence of each story is different — and with it the dramaturgical and stylistic need the film or the commercial asks for on its own terms. His work always begins by capturing that essence and shaping a vision from it. That unrepeatability is what keeps the work exciting. Each time it begins as an adventure.
Jan went through a phase of purely orchestral writing, but he has always composed electronic music alongside it, and most often fuses the two. Symphonic orchestration, unusual samples and electronic sound meet in combinations that don't otherwise exist, and he is never looking for the safe one. Lately he has been going deeper into hardware synthesis, searching for sounds no preset will give him.
He earned his Master's degree from FAMU, the Film and Television School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague, and has since built extensive experience across film and advertising. He is comfortable working on the border between music and sound.
His film work includes original scores for the sci-fi detective feature Restore Point, the true-crime documentary Aneta (Netflix), and the animated short Everything We Missed.
Jan works regularly with international directors, producers and music production companies including MassiveMusic, The Elements Music and Audioforce. His commercial credits include Red Bull, IKEA, Škoda, Erste, Audi, Raiffeisenbank, Baťa Shoes, Tesco, Vodafone and Pilsner Urquell.
His work has been recognised at leading creative festivals. He received a D&AD Award for Post Bellum: Breaking the Silence, shortlisted at Cannes Lions, and his sound design for Red Bull F1 Road Trip was nominated at the Music + Sound Awards. He was a top-ten finalist at the Berlin International Film Scoring Competition, was nominated for the Czech Lion for Best Music for Restore Point, and in 2026 won Gold at the ADC Czech Creative Awards.
He works as a creator and a partner to directors and producers, not as a supplier — looking for people who want the same thing he does: music that is part of the storytelling, not a layer placed on top.