The Conductor  takes the audience into the heart of classical music, and into the soul of one of its top artists, the internationally renowned conductor Marin Alsop — the first woman to serve as music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra, and the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra — giving us backstage passes to the artistry and energy that rewards her audiences and inspires her students. With unprecedented access, the director and film crew accompany Marin Alsop to concerts around the world from Mozart’s Magic Flute in São Paulo, to Mahler’s 1st Symphony in Lucerne, to Bernstein’s Mass in Baltimore, and her opening concert in Vienna.

In spite of rejections from the establishment of classical music and being told “girls can’t do that,” Marin Alsop persisted and never let go of her childhood dream of becoming a conductor. The film features a combination of intimate interviews with the Maestra, a look into her private life, unseen archival footage with her mentor Leonard Bernstein, and Vérité scenes conducting different orchestras and teaching the next wave of conductors who, like her, were being excluded from the classical music canon.