Following the Ninth

Beethoven's Ninth Symphony has become an anthem of liberation and hope around the world: Playing at Tiananmen Square as the army crushed a struggle for freedom. In Chile, women in the Pinochet dictatorship sang it at torture prisons. The Berlin Wall fell to the sound of the Ninth. In Japan, it was sung 10,000 strong after the 2011 tsunami. Creating an ode to hope, this film asks "How could a man sick, childless and deaf, create an anthem of such beauty and transcendence over suffering?"