Documentary

At the castle of Buisson de May in Normandy lived an exceptional composer: Charlotte Sohy. Born in 1887, she lived through a century of upheavals, two wars, the 1929 crash, the rise of modernity, without ever giving up her vocation. Yet despite the richness and diversity of her work – symphony, opera, chamber music, choral and piano pieces – her name vanished from concert programs and history books.

Like so many other women, Charlotte Sohy suffered from deep invisibility: few published works, few performances, little press coverage. Mother of seven children and navigating a musical world dominated by men, she composed against all odds, driven by fierce determination.

This documentary, built on rich archives that bring Charlotte Sohy back to life, also recounts the sudden rediscovery of her music.

It begins with her grandson, François-Henri Labey, who has been typesetting her scores on a computer for 15 years. Then in 2013, Claire Bodin programmed one of her pieces at the Présence Compositrices festival. Moved by the work she conducted, conductor Debora Waldman fought to premiere the Symphonie Grande Guerre, soon joined by cellist Héloïse Luzzati and pianist Célia Oneto Bensaid, who recorded three CDs. Thus revealed to the world, Charlotte Sohy rose in just a few years from oblivion to recognition, performed by leading artists such as Renaud Capuçon and Lang Lang.

Produced by LuFilms, Charlotte Sohy – The Recognition of a Woman Composer is a film of transmission and restoration, a powerful story of perseverance and sisterhood. It questions the absence of women in music history and celebrates the strength of those who today restore the voices of forgotten composers.

With Claire Bodin, Renaud Capuçon, Manon Galy, François-Henri Labey, Lang Lang, Héloïse Luzzati, Nadège Meden, Célia Oneto Bensaid, Debora Waldman, Catherine Werner, and the voices of Blandine Lenoir and Anne-Laure Furgé.