The child prodigy turns 60! Anne-Sophie Mutter from the small village of Wehr in the Black Forest was discovered by Herbert von Karajan when she was 13. Since then, she has had an unprecedented world career. "If you want to get to know me, you have to experience me on stage," says star violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter. She does not appreciate questions about her private life. How do you portray such a woman?
Filmmaker Sigrid Faltin thought that putting the artist in unusual conversational situations might be the best way to open her up. Asked whom she would like to have as a conversation partner, Mrs. Mutter spontaneously said: tennis star Roger Federer. She also named the New York magician Steve Cohen, her musician friends Daniel Barenboim, John Williams, Jörg Widmann and her long-time piano accompanist Lambert Orkis, "musically my best buddy". In an exchange with these men (she couldn't quite think of any women), she tells in the film why she identifies with high-performance athletes, how she got her concert robes, and why she regrets having stopped playing the piano. She talks at length about the early death of her husband and her life as a single mother with a stunning world career.
And then she arranged to meet the filmmaker for a long hike on the Wilder Kaiser in the Austrian Alps. Enough material to experience Anne-Sophie Mutter not only as a musician, but also as a sporty, politically and socially committed woman. Archival footage from five decades complements this unusual film about one of the greatest musicians of our time.
Dr. Sigrid Faltin studied English, German, and history in Bonn and Freiburg. Her Ph.D. thesis was on the “Emigration from the Palatinate to the United States“ in Modern History. After training as a regional correspondent with the German TV station SWF, she worked as a host for radio and TV. Today she is a documentary film director, writer and producer. She has received several international awards for her films, among them several New York Film Festival awards. She is at home in Freiburg, Germany.
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