The Concert

Andrei Filipov was once a celebrated conductor of the Bolshoi orchestra in the Soviet Union. After he refused to dismiss his Jewish musicians during the Brezhnev era, he lost his position and has spent roughly thirty years working as a cleaner in the same concert hall. One evening he finds an invitation from the Théâtre du Châtelet asking the Bolshoi orchestra to perform in Paris, and he conceives the idea of gathering his former players, now scattered across odd jobs, and passing them off as the official orchestra.

The Concert was directed by Radu Mihăileanu, who also wrote the screenplay with Matthew Robbins and Alain-Michel Blanc, and produced it with Alain Attal and Michael Blakey. Aleksey Guskov plays Filipov, with Mélanie Laurent as the young violinist Anne-Marie Jacquet, Dmitri Nazarov as his old friend Sasha, and François Berléand, Miou-Miou and Lionel Abelanski among a credited cast of thirty. Released in 2009 and running 119 minutes, the film is a comedy-drama co-produced by Belgium, Italy, Romania and France through Wild Bunch, Canal+, CinéCinéma and EuropaCorp. On TMDB it holds a 7.2 rating from just over five hundred votes, reflecting a modest but clearly appreciative audience.