‘Maestra’ Review: Uplifting Documentary Follows a Competition for Women Conductors

Caryn James
·4 min read
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Arriving in the wake of Tár, Maestra reaches an audience primed to see the dark side of the classical music world. And while Cate Blanchett’s Lydia Tár stands out for her abusive behavior, she also represents one common fact: Very few conductors of major orchestras are women.

Maggie Contreras’ likeable, informative Tribeca documentary follows an event created in 2018 to address that inequity. Every two years, women in the early stages of their conducting careers join the La Maestra competition in Paris, vying to win attention and professional help. They need all the help they can get. Marin Alsop, a competition judge and perhaps the most famous female conductor in the world, says in the film that when she told her childhood violin teacher she wanted to conduct, she was told, “Girls can’t do that.” Deborah Borda, the head of La Maestra’s jury and CEO of the New York Philharmonic, says that even now less than 3 percent of conductors of the world’s foremost orchestras are women. But like the competition itself, Maestra focuses on the positive moves and ascendent careers for women.

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As it follows five well-chosen conductors from different countries through the 2022 competition, the film depicts the unglamorous side of their lives as well as their accomplishments. They are itinerants, moving from one gig to another, hoping to land a permanant spot somewhere. Melisse Brunet, one of the main figures, has moved 8 times in 12 years.

In a brisk, sharply edited opening, the film visits most of its subjects at home as they are preparing to go to Paris. It finds Melisse, a Paris native, teaching in Iowa, with unpleasant memories of the city she is about to return to. Tamara Dworetz, the only American the film follows, is in Atlanta. Effusive and outgoing, she is ambitious but she and her husband also want a family, and she wonders how to combine the two. In Athens, Greece, Zoe Zeniodi, a mother of two, is already doing that juggling act. Her work takes her from her family for long stretches, including, as the cameras effectively show us, a month in a dreary apartment in New Mexico. Anna Sulkowska-Migon, young but prodigiously talented, is from Krakow, Poland. Her psoriasis comes out under stress, she admits. The film later picks up the thread of Ustina Dubitsky, a Ukrainian who wears ribbons the colors of her country’s flag on her wrist, and whose small daughter made adorable crayon drawings on her score when she wasn’t looking.

We follow their performances as the competition whittles down 14 competitors. (A quick Google search will tell you who won.) Smartly, Contreras’ cameras face the conductors on stage, allowing us to observe the fascinating differences in their styles. They all have expressive faces, and individual body language. Zoe’s style is full of grand, dramatic gestures. Anna’s is fluid and graceful. Music flows through the film as they conduct movements from Mozart’s Don Giovanni and piano concertos by Ravel and Clara Schumann.

Alsop and other judges comment on the process and demands of conducting, but the film gives more weight to the human interest side, expanding its appeal beyond classical music aficionados. The documentary doesn’t ignore the problems women face. Zoe says that after starting a youth orchestra, she was fired from it when she became pregnant. But the editing emphasizes the camaraderie and support among them. Tamara is practically a cheerleader, telling Melisse she will be famous in a week. They all have dinner together, discuss their lives, and seem to appreciate that they are already in a privileged position by being in La Maestra.

Contreras, a documentary producer directing her first film, has a straightforward style almost throughout. At the end, she makes an odd choice, interspersing scenes of Melisse visiting her childhood home — and her memories of being unhappy and misunderstood — with Anna conducting. There is a logical connection. Earlier Melisse had told Anna  that she envies her attachment to her home country. But the back-and-forth detracts from Anna’s beautiful conducting of Stravinsky’s Pulcinella Suite, one of the loveliest musical moments in the film.

And two unsettling comments are too-briefly dropped in at the end, when some of the women who were eliminated talk about the feedback the judges gave them. One says she was told her energy was admirable at the start but grew to be too big, a judgment she doubts a male conductor would have heard. Maybe, maybe not. More disturbing, another says she was told to smile more, an idea that plays into deeply rooted sexist tropes. Maestra leaves things there, causing us to wonder how those comments could have emerged from a competition meant to promote women. Even when it chooses to put the rosiest gloss on things, though, the film is bracing and inspiring, giving some talented conductors much-deserved visibility.

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