Notes From The Program Director | Week of February 16th, 2024

Nominated for Best International Film and written and directed by German director Ilker Çatak, The Teachers’ Lounge is one of the best films of the year, the kind of film that reminds me of the great power cinema has to reveal the expansive emotional landscapes that reside just below the surface of everyday life. Ebert critic and author Matt Zoeller Seitz opened his review of the film in this way: " It's not easy to make an intense thriller about things that happen every day. But when one appears, it's glorious."  And he's right -- the film is set in the very ordinary setting of a school where very ordinary things happen, but it is, nonetheless, a glorious and intense thriller, which Seitz even aptly compares to the wild ride that was the film Uncut Gems (2019). 

The Teachers’ Lounge follows the story of Carla Nowak, a young teacher in a German secondary school, new to her job, idealistic, eager to love and be loved by her students--and she is. At least, initially. But when an immigrant student is accused of stealing, our young, eager Ms. Nowak makes a series of earnest, well-intentioned choices that lead to increasingly hostile perceptions from others -- from fellow teachers, parents, and students alike -- and to a situation that gradually seems ever more impossible to untangle, emotionally and factually. 

At a spare, 90-odd minutes, the film flies by, absorbing viewers both in the twisting plot and in the headspace of Ms. Nowak, who is played by a marvel of an actress, Leonie Benesch. We are with her, every step of the way, sympathetic to her every decision, even as the film is also brilliantly careful to help us understand and sympathize with the perceptions and feelings of others. It’s a film about the way in which one’s ideals meet the messy realities of life, the complexities of other lives, and the rigidity of the institutional structures in which we all live and which often ignore the individual and the personal. We’ll have The Teachers’ Lounge with us only a short time; I’d urge you not to miss it!