The Class

One school year in a middle school in the 20th arrondissement of Paris. François teaches French to a class of fourteen- and fifteen-year-olds from every background: Malian, Chinese, Caribbean, Maghrebi, French. They argue with him about everything, the imperfect subjunctive, respect, what words mean, why they should even be there. He is clever and patient, and sometimes he loses his temper. One careless word in a staff meeting, one confrontation in the classroom, and things begin to slide out of control.

Laurent Cantet based the film on the book by François Bégaudeau, who also plays the teacher. The students are real teenagers from a real school, and they improvised their scenes over a long workshop. The result feels like a documentary, but it is cleverly built: almost the whole film stays inside the school walls, as the original title says, and the tension grows from small things, a joke, a look, a word misunderstood.

It is not a film with a lesson. It shows how hard teaching is, how much power words have, and how a school can be both a place of hope and a machine for excluding the kids who don't fit. It won the Palme d'Or, the first for a French film in over twenty years. Funny, tense and very honest.