Three children from the impoverished Las Brisas district in Valencia, Venezuela, dream of becoming professional orchestra musicians. Over the span of 10 years, the film follows Edixon, Dissandra and Wuilly’s journey within the El Sistema youth academic music organization. The children do not give up in their attempts to achieve a better future and spend many long hours practicing violin and rehearsing. In spite of huge efforts, their dreams are threatened by Venezuela’s political and economic instability. How will the autocratic regime’s crisis impact their fates and fragile musical journey? A story of resistance, resilience and perseverance that explores the power of discipline and classical music as tools for survival.

El Sistema is Venezuela’s state financed classical music education programme, with some several hundred thousand children participating. The programme’s goal is to foster social changes and improve the lives of children through musical education. Following the El Sistema model, similar programmes were created in other places in the world – the UK, USA, and Canada. Since 2010, the prevailing economic crisis in Venezuela has in scope been compared to the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s.

Since 2010, the prevailing economic crisis in Venezuela has in scope been compared to the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s. Having started during the Hugo Chavez presidency, it is the deepest economic crisis in the country’s history – hyperinflation, food shortages, high crime and death rates, mass citizen migration. A UN report sates that up to 2021, more than five million people left the country.