Based on real #MeToo stories, a prodigy pianist trains under the wing of an abusive predator.

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT

What are you willing to sacrifice for your ambitions? It was December of 2017, the Weinstein scandal rocked the entertainment world 3 months prior, and the classical music world turned upside down with the unraveling of James Levine, the famed conductor of the Metropolitan Opera. The floodgates opened and story after story tumbled out of the classical music world. I was shaken. As a violinist since the age of 4, this was my community, these were my organizations I was a part of. Suddenly, this distant MeToo movement was right near home. And in the classical music world, the nature of our craft makes it especially difficult to uncover and convict sexual predators who prey on the ambition of younger artists. 

Here is where I believe film has a unique opportunity to bring us behind the doors of the private lesson and allow us into the emotions and questions of the victim. Is this worth it? What if I don’t? Then, after the culmination of physical abuse, we linger in the “caesura,” or pause, of emotional trauma. A gap silent and void of identity and song, a place where the musician cannot utter another note because the pain is too near, a moment when crippling doubts and questions spur reflection. But, like a caesura in song or poetry, this pause is not the end of the piece, but a necessary part of the journey to resolution.