THEin the teachers’ lounge – broadcast tonight at 9.20pm first on Rai 3 TV – is an author’s pedagogical drama on the universe of school as cruel metaphor of the contemporary world. A series of thefts puts a teacher in crisis which, due to an innate and misplaced sense of justice, fuels difficulties and mistrust between adults and children and amplifies the culture of suspicion and prejudice. The absolute protagonist is the talented Leonie Benesch: with its contradictions, full of fervor, it underlines how society is increasingly distant from its ideal. The movie nominated for the 2023 Oscar in the best international film category.
The teachers’ lounge on Rai 3, plot and cast of the film tonight on TV
The young teacher mathematics and physical education Carla Nowak (Bensch) This is his first assignment in a German middle school. He loves his job and, above all, he loves being able to shape the minds of his students, future adults of tomorrow. The first month is a real surprise: the teaching staff, the institute and its students promise a peaceful and uneventful school year.
Things change when a long series of small thefts comes to light, always taking place in the classroom frequented by teachers, between one lesson and another. Everyone doubles their attention on the boys, looking for the culprit. In the group of attentive people, the number one suspect stands out: a teenager very lively and of Turkish origin.
Carla, feeling the weight of his role and his idealism, decides to go beyond the obvious and to the creeping sense of shared prejudice. With great stubbornness and sense of justice, he begins to investigate without sharing his project with anyone.
After having used a webcam without scruples in order to catch the little culprit (who perhaps isn’t so young), he thinks that the thief is instead an adult. That is to say, an administrative employee of the school and mother of Oskar, the best student in his class. His supposed discovery it will set in motion a series of reactions that will bring critical issues beyond good intentions.
Leonie Bensch in “The Teachers’ Lounge”. (Lucky Red)
The review
A civil society in fact, not just in name, he knows perfectly well how fundamental education is for the future of their country. The teachers’ lounge, a little jewel of suspense and refined indictment of the community, it exposes the flaws of a fundamental institution like the school. A place that should be an oasis of peaceful learning for future generations and instead becomes a poor copy of the world that awaits them.
The director İlker Çatak (Yellow letters) use steals as a pure expedient to describe the world of adults. The concern of adults is shrouded in hypocritical staging, thus entrenched between prejudices and disregard for the consequences of their actions.
The dry style and without taking a position remember the excellent work of the Frenchman The class – between the walls (2008). In the same way as director Laurent Cantet, Also The teachers’ lounge he chooses to film corridors and limited places as a claustrophobic metaphor of prison teaching. Unlike his almost emotionless documentary touch, İlker Çatak instead prefers to immerse the viewer in an affective gaze of the protagonist. Of course, Carla is not a pure, flawless heroine, she is not the only good one in the middle of a space inhabited by bad guys.
Final explanation, film duration 98 minutes
Carla’s efforts to learn the truth they do not only come from a noble soul but from absolutist attitudes they resemble, in other ways, those of those he despises. It is precisely this discrepancy that is highlighted the ending, difficult and ambiguous like his entire story. Carla now thinks that Mrs. Kuhn is the culprit because he looks at it with his personal and unspeakable prejudices.
He gathers evidence where there are only clues and this zealous persistence produces even more serious consequences. Oskar can no longer manage his anger which comes from having seen the mother at the center of suspicion. THE thefts no longer matter because resentment has raised the level of tension and invaded every semblance of common sense.
The willing teacher can now understand of not being without blemish and That doubt can be much healthier than granite certainties. Finally, the viewer also realizes that nothing is as it seems: who the thief really is is and will remain a mystery.