Watch Composer Pablo Pico Craft The Score For Eva Lusbaronian’s Toronto Player ‘Death Of The Fish’ (EXCLUSIVE)

French composer Pablo Pico is no stranger to animation. In recent years, he scored the celebrated feature Sirocco and served on the feature film jury at Annecy.

His latest animated project, Death of the Fish, directed by Eva Lusbaronian and produced by Miyu Productions, presented him with a distinctive challenge: composing music for a story told without dialogue. The film just world premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and released its soundtrack on streaming services. Cartoon Brew has been given exclusive access to a BTS video demonstrating how Pico does his work, and we spoke with the composer

The 14-minute 2D animated short follows a mother and daughter as a small, everyday event, the death of a fish, triggers the resurfacing of great loss. The mother drifts toward despair, her daughter trying to hold her back with only her body and movement. A heron, symbolic and ordinary, urges the girl to accept her limits and find her place.

Although Pico joined the project early in its development, he didn’t begin composing until most of the animation was complete. “When I started, about 80 percent of the film was already finished,” he says. “Eva and I agreed from the beginning that the music shouldn’t influence the choreography or the animation — it had to come later and stand on its own.”

That decision left Pico with the challenge of creating music that could support the emotion of the story without leading it. With no dialogue, he turned to the human body for inspiration. “The characters express themselves through dancing,” he explains. “So I chose human voices and body percussion as an extension of that expression. It gives them a kind of musical, wordless voice.”

The score blends live voices and choirs with digitally processed samples, creating a hybrid sound that feels both grounded and ethereal. Pico also wove in auditory textures linked to the watery environment of the film, connecting music and sound design more closely than usual.

For him, the recording sessions captured in the making-of video are the most rewarding part of the process. “I love working with real musicians,” he says. “Recording is always a mix of joy and concentration. When the filmmakers are in the room, they can actually see the music — and in a way the movie — coming alive. Conducting demands precision, but you also have to stay open to human vibrations and happy accidents.”

Pico sees strong parallels between animation and music. “Like animation, music has no limits. Maybe that’s why animation directors often give composers so much freedom — they want us to feel as free as they are. Both of us are trying to make something move, whether it’s drawings or sounds, in time and space.”

With the soundtrack now available, Pico encourages audiences to listen through to the end. “People usually focus on the first tracks and forget the last ones,” he says. “I would recommend the final piece, Respirer. It really matters.”