DON’T WORRY ABOUT ME – DAS LEBEN DER JUTTA HIPP

After the war, jazz conquered Europe – a men’s world. But Jutta Hipp from Leipzig broke through. Born in 1925, she drew, wrote, and played piano before fleeing to the West, where Munich, Frankfurt, hailed her talent. New York soon followed: critic Leonard Feather brought her to the Hickory House, and Blue Note signed her as their first white female instrumentalist. She played with Zoot Sims and Horace Silver, holding her ground in a scene that allowed women only as singers.

Then the dream unraveled: drugs, sexism, racism. Abandoned and humiliated, Hipp quit music entirely and became a seamstress – a decision no one could fathom. The film asks why. With voices like Toshiko Akiyoshi, Julia Kadel, Don Was, Dave Amram and narrator Jutta Hipp herself and Elizabeth Ok, it traces Hipp’s life of triumph and refusal – and exposes the power structures still shaping jazz today.