Cezary Skubiszewski to be Honoured at 2026 Screen Music Awards

Cezary Skubiszewski will receive the Distinguished Services to the Australian Screen honour at the 2026 Screen Music Awards.

The composer, a former Music Director of the awards and a 12-time winner, will be recognised for more than 30 years of work on Australian screen at the event going ahead on Wednesday, October 28th at Brisbane's Fortitude Music Hall.

The awards, presented by APRA AMCOS and the Australian Guild of Screen Composers (AGSC), span 16 categories, including short film, television series, documentaries, children’s programming and feature films.

Born in Warsaw in 1948, Skubiszewski played piano from an early age and studied classical music under the choir director of the Warsaw Opera. He moved to Paris and then London in the early 1970s, and later came to Australia, where he spent a few years training as a veterinarian. He settled in Sydney in the late 1970s, joined jazz-rock group Corroboree and began writing jingles.

In the 1980s he moved into orchestral and music-theatre work, including the nationally televised Symphony - Home at Last and SOUNDeSCAPE, which was commissioned by the Victorian Arts Centre. Advertising work led to television credits including Sky Trackers and Neighbours.

His first feature-film score was Lilian’s Story (1996), which won Best Music at the Asia-Pacific Film Festival. He went on to score Two Hands (1999), Red Dog (2011) and The Sapphires (2012). He also wrote music for advertising campaigns, including Carlton Draught’s Big Ad (2005) and the VB Stubby Symphony (2007), and composed for the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games and the Melbourne 2006 Commonwealth Games.

Beyond his Screen Music Awards, Skubiszewski has won four AACTA Awards and four AGSC Awards. He received the Centenary Medal in 2003 for service to Australian society and film production, and the Film Critics Circle of Australia’s Life Achievement Award in 2010.

“Thank you very much for this wonderful honour, it came as a big surprise to me and I am deeply grateful to APRA for recognising my work with this Distinguished Service Award," Skubiszewski said.

“This achievement belongs just as much to the incredible colleagues, mentors and family members who supported and inspired me along the way. I feel most fortunate indeed."

Previous recipients of the Distinguished Services to the Australian Screen award include Bruce Beresford, Christopher Gordon, Nerida Tyson-Chew, Nigel Westlake and Rachel Perkins.