In 1874, a group of scorned, penniless artistic mavericks held their own exhibition outside official channels, launching the Impressionist movement and changing the art world forever. Made in close collaboration with the Musee d’Orsay in Paris and the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., this documentary relates the story of that groundbreaking show and the movement’s birth, told in the words of those who witnessed it: the artists, the press, and the people of 19th-century Paris.