Christiaan van Schermbeek

Colourful, unpolished portrait of the Rotterdam theatre-maker Paul Röttger, whose work has been all about inclusivity for 30 years. The thread running through the film is rehearsals by Theater Babel Rotterdam, the theatre company of which he is director, that performs some 150 productions a year. Röttger previously headed the Rotterdams Centrum voor Theater and Theater Maatwerk (Rotterdam Centre for Theater and Custom-made Theatre). The documentary shows his ongoing search for equal artistic collaboration between people from a wide variety of genders, cultural backgrounds, physical and mental conditions, and professionalism.

At 41 years old, the Quebecois conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin has established himself as one of the most gifted maestros of his generation, with numerous prestigious posts with some of the world’s greatest orchestras already under his belt, including the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra (music director), London Philharmonic Orchestra (principal guest conductor), and the Orchestre métropolitain de Montréal. One week before Nézet-Séguin's official nomination as music director of the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra in 2008, filmmaker Christiaan van Schermbeek met the maestro for the first time. The once-in-a-lifetime event inspired Schermbeek to begin this documentary project, giving us a fascinating glimpse into the life of a truly extraordinary individual.