Born in Lima to Dutch parents, Selma Mutal, who resides in Paris, studied composition at the National Conservatory of Amsterdam, Film Scoring at the 'École Normale de Musique' in Paris and piano improvisation with renowned improviser Misha Mengelberg.

Selma Mutal started her career composing for dance, theatre and television and has, since 2003, composed extensively for cinema, with a focus on international coproductions. Her credits include director Claudia Llosa's film The Milk of Sorrow (La Teta Asustada), winner of the Golden Bear at the 2009 Berlin International Film Festival and Oscar-nominated for Best Foreign Language Film in 2010.

In 2010, Selma Mutal composed the soundtrack for Undertow (Contracorriente) directed by Javier Fuentes-León, awarded among others with the World Cinema Audience Award for Best Film at the 2011 Sundance Festival and Best Original Soundtrack Award at the Annonay International Film Festival. The collaboration with Fuentes-León continued on a second feature film, The Vanished Elephant, which premiered at Toronto International Film Festival in 2014, leading to their latest joint project Noblesse Oblige, an international coproduction with a theatrical release in 2020.

For filmmaker Tod Lending (Legacy), Selma Mutal scored several films, among them Burden of Silence (2012), the short film Vezo (2013), which received the Sundance Institute/Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Award, and All the Difference (2015), a feature-length documentary filmed over five and a half years and inspired by Wes Moore’s New York Times bestselling book, 'The Other Wes'.

In 2013, the Aubagne International Film Festival commissioned Selma Mutal to direct the Master Class on Film Composition culminating in a live performance during the festival's closing ceremony and the Festival International des Scénaristes in Valence, France, invited her as member of the Music Jury for their 2018 edition.

Selma Mutal’s film scores include the music for Ederly, directed by Polish director Piotr Dumala as well as the soundtrack  for Block’hood - a city building video game by architect and game designer José Sanchez, awarded with the ‘Best Game Play Award’ at the 2016 Games for Change Festival in New York. In 2019, Selma Mutal wrote the music for Víctor Garciá León’s feature film The Europeans (screened in the Official Competition at Málaga Film Festival 2020) as well as for the Spanish mini-series Lucky Day / El Dia de Mi Suerte, for which she received the Best Soundtrack Award for at the International Series Festival of Buenos Aires in 2020.

Besides writing for film, Mutal composes music for contemporary dance. Her projects include In.Quieta Rooms (2017) by the Zurich based Nunzio Impellizzeri Dance Company. A continuation of the collaboration, the new creation Corpo Barocco premiered at Tanzhaus Zürich in 2018. Furthermore, she worked with choreographer Ozgur Adam Inanç on ‘When the Children Cry’, performed by the Ankara Modern National Dance Company (2022) as well as with Agostina d’Alessandro on ‘The Nature of Intimacy’ which premiered during the 'Mars en Baroque' Festival 2023 at the Théâtre National de Marseille.