LIN THE TEACHERS’ ROOM
Type: pedagogical-didactic drama
Direction: Ilker Çatak. With Leonie Benesch, Anne-Kathrin Gummich, Leonard Stettnisch, Eva Löbau, Michael Klammer, Rafael Stachowiak
Nominated for Germany at the international Oscars (competitor of ours I captain), Ilker Çatak’s film seems tailor-made to “open the debate” on the tensions that schools are experiencing, including the Italian one.
In a “zero tolerance” institution, as the principal likes to repeat, the suspicion that a student might steal triggers a series of events which upset the (tiring) internal balance.
Leonie Benesch, protagonist of “The Teachers’ Room” (photo by Judith Kaufmann).
Almost as a sort of revenge against his colleagues who had (unjustly) accused one of his students, the math teacher uses his computer camera to expose the secretary who stole some money from her, without imagining that her complaint will turn into a kind of collective tragedy involving the other students (the “thief’s” son is in her class), the parents and the teachers.
Excellently supported by Leonie Benesch’s performance, the film is able to highlight the many tensions that intertwine around the themes of education and teachingfrom the clash between tolerance and discipline to the hypocrisies of adults, to the “cruelties” of children and ending with the belief that everyone has their own “own” truth.
For those who want to deal with teaching problems.
The trailer.
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