Film Notes

The Teachers’ Lounge review: Leonie Benesch is sensational in this unlikely white-knuckle thriller.

A teacher finds herself at centre of prejudice, complacency and institutional failings in this suspenseful German drama.

It’s an unlikely set-up for a white-knuckle thriller. Ilker Çatak’s nervy Oscar nominee follows an idealistic young teacher, Carla Nowak – a sensational Leonie Benesch – who is hoping to make a difference. She does, but not in the way that she intended.

Carla, who is of Polish descent, is quick to come to the defence of her student Ali (Can Rodenbostel), the son of Turkish immigrants, when he is accused of a series of thefts at the school. She understandably rails against heavy-handed tactics that include interrogation and student searches, and is especially dismayed when her colleagues Milosz (Rafael Stachowiak) and Thomas (Michael Klammer) encourage students to tattle on their classmates.

Escalating tensions, amplified by Marvin Miller’s unnerving violin score, are compounded by sensitivities (and insensitivities) to race and class. Carla is already marginalised by her high-mindedness and origins when she sets a trap in the hope of confirming the true thief’s identity.

The sleeve of a polka-dot blouse leads her to an office administrator, Ms Kuhn (Eva Löbau), who is irate when confronted. There are distinct echoes of Jean Vigo’s Zero for Conduct when Kuhn’s son Oskar (Leonard Stettnisch), a sensitive student in Carla’s maths class, becomes increasingly disruptive. Thanks to her illicit recording, Carla then comes under investigation herself.

The script, by Johannes Duncker and director Ilker Çatak, grabs the viewer from the get-go. Judith Kaufmann’s urgent, claustrophobic cinematography tightens the vice-like grip. Dark, angular shifts in lighting and production design signal the heroine’s unravelling. It feels appropriate that Benesch, who made her feature debut in Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon, finds herself at the centre of a dramatic knot of prejudice, complacency and institutional failings.

Tara Brady The Irish Times,  Apr 11 2024

The Teachers’ Lounge review – a masterclass in playground politics.

A teacher’s intervention in a spate of thefts upsets the balance of her school in Ilker Çatak’s taut, Oscar-nominated drama.

The first thing you notice is the score: an apprehensive, pulsing single note, plucked on violins and tightly strung nerves, it’s a choking panic attack in musical form. And it’s a masterclass in using a stripped-back, minimal approach to gripping effect, evident throughout Ilker Çatak’s terrific, taut, Oscar-nominated drama.

The setting is a German secondary school, a location the restless, bustling camera leaves only once. Çatak adds to the oppressive feeling by shooting in a tight, boxed-in aspect ratio: the building may be airy and open plan, but the walls are closing in.

Like Laurent Cantet’s The Class, the school serves as a microcosm, with wider world issues of racial profiling and socioeconomic divisions playing out in miniature. But it works both ways, with a mirror image of playground politics reflected in the mean-girl manoeuvring in the staff room. There’s another parallel with The Class: both films focus on idealistic but fallible teachers who, through an impulsive misstep, upset the delicate balance of their workplace.

Carla Nowak (Leonie Benesch) is new to the school, her commitment and optimism still unblunted. When the suspicion for a spate of thefts falls on a particular boy, based on little more than his skin colour, she acts to exonerate him, capturing, through dubious means, evidence that seems to implicate a fellow member of staff. But the accused teacher, single mother of Oskar (Leo Stettnisch), another child in Carla’s class, doggedly protests her innocence. Benesch is superb, her face a glazed mask of panic as the shockwaves resulting from her actions shake the very foundations of the school.

Wendy Ide, The Observer, 13 Apr 2024.