Gloria!
Feminist Italian costume drama in which five musically talented orphan girls, very much against the wishes of the chapel master, work on their own composition in preparation for a visit by Pope Pius VII.
The year is 1800; the place, Sant Ignazio College, a run-down old musical institute for girls, somewhere near Venice. Here lives ‘the Mute’, a silent, solitary maid tasked with the humblest chores. No one knows that her name is Teresa; no one suspects that she possesses an extraordinary talent that enables her to sense the harmony of the universe and reshape reality through music. While everyone at the college is making a huge fuss about the imminent visit of the newly enthroned Pope, and the old chapel master is struggling to put together a new composition for the Pontifex, Teresa makes a discovery in a storeroom: a brand-new invention, a beautiful instrument – a pianoforte. Around Teresa and her revolutionary ‘music machine’ gathers an amazing quartet of young women: the best and most dynamic musicians of Sant Ignazio. From this secret cell of great yet overlooked talents, a new music will be born that takes the Pope, and the entire world, by surprise. (source: www.berlinale.de)