Concert, The

Andreï Filipov was a prodigy — the celebrated conductor of the Bolshoi Orchestra, the greatest orchestra in Russia. Today, aged 50, he still works at the Bolshoi, but as a depressed, hard-drinking cleaner.

During the Communist era, he was fired at the height of his fame for refusing to get rid of all his Jewish players — Zionists and "Enemies of the People" — including his best friend, Sacha Grossman.

The director of the Bolshoi, an old apparatchik, has been promising forever to return Andreï’s orchestra to him “soon,” but, this is a humiliating, sadistic mockery. For the director, Andreï’s a has-been, who's receiving a big favour by being kept on as a cleaner.

Then, Andreï finds a fax inviting the orchestra to play at Pleyel, in Paris, in two weeks’ time, as a last-minute replacement for the indisposed Los Angeles Philharmonic. Andreï conceives of a crazy notion: He’ll round up his old musician buddies, a motley bunch now scraping a living in Moscow as cab drivers, removal men, flea market traders and suppliers of porno film sound effects, to name a few occupations.

They’ll go to Paris as the Bolshoi. They’ll defy destiny and take their revenge! Will they make it?