I’m not sure how audiences who haven’t experienced teaching make sense of this kind of narrative. It shouldn’t make a difference of course. Every job has its rhythms, its challenges, its satisfactions. Most of the time we hope the creative teams will lead us into a story set in a particular working environment in such a way that is accessible to all. Films about teaching are many, partly because we’ve all been in classrooms as students and watched a variety of teachers at work. I confess though, that I’ve never attempted to teach a class of 12 year-olds anything. My experience is with older teenagers but the issues and interactions in this film are nonetheless familiar, including a student’s use of a fire extinguisher as a projectile. I felt aspects of this narrative deeply in several ways.

Two of the male teachers in the school who drive the search for a thief in the school community

We are in a school in Hamburg (the location isn’t mentioned but that’s where IMDb says it was filmed). It appears to be a ‘lower’ secondary school with students up to 15? (It’s filmed in more than one school so we don’t really get a full picture of the institution.) The lead character is Carla Nowak (Leonie Benesch) a young woman in her early thirties who is in her first term at the school, teaching Maths and PE. Before we have much chance to get to know Carla and her class of around twenty 12 year-olds, her lesson is interrupted by the headteacher Dr. Bettina Böhm and two other (male) teachers. They ‘oblige’ all the boys in the class to show what they have in their wallets. This follows a possible lead similarly ‘extracted’ from the class representative on the school council about a potential thief. This exercise discovers nothing and upsets students and their parents. Carla herself is not impressed but a little later she herself makes an unwise decision when she tries to catch a possible thief herself. In her case things go very badly and quickly get out of control.

Carla (centre) with two of the female teachers, one is also a counsellor the other is perhaps not as supportive as she might be

There are several kinds of teaching and learning narratives set in public schools (i.e schools open to all children in a district, not the British type of private school which is confusingly labelled ‘public school’). Some deal with stories about inspirational teachers who battle through against the odds and win over reluctant students. This is often the mainstream Hollywood type of film. Other school-based films make the school into a microcosm of society in order to make some kind of social comment and in other narratives the school is simply the backdrop for a drama about individuals. We might argue that in this case it isn’t straightforward to work out what kind of narrative we are getting. The title for instance suggests that this is about a drama in what in the UK we would call ‘the school staffroom’ and to some extent that is true, though the incident doesn’t lead to a conventional narrative resolution. At the same time some reviewers see the school as representing a society in which the whole structure of rules and regulations for dealing with behaviour has got out of hand. Ms Nowak as the central character is also singled out as the focus and what she experiences may be what the film is really ‘about’ – although again this is left open. What this means overall is that the film achieves some specific aims in terms of pleasing an audience but will also perhaps alienate some other audience members.

Carla leads her class in a primal scream, hoping to release the tension

Leonie Benesch is terrific as Carla. As one reviewer notes, we see the impact of all the things that happen to her displayed on her face and in the way she uses her body (and the changes in the clothes she wears). She is intelligent, perceptive and idealistic in the best way as a teacher but not perhaps experienced enough to recognise the problems created by this school with its ‘zero tolerance’ for certain kinds of anti-social behaviour. She makes mistakes like all of us but rather than pulling back she then tries to make amends. There must be a German equivalent of the Anglo-Saxon adage “When you are in a hole, stop digging”.

Carla with cake in hand (it’s a teacher’s birthday) is asked by two of her students to give an interview to the student newspaper

Director Ilker Çatak also wrote the screenplay with Johannes Duncker. I don’t know anything about this pair apart from their credits but Çatak is presumably Turkish-German and aware of issues for the Turkish community in Northern Germany. There is an issue about language and the head teacher has to ask the parents of one student to speak in German when they are discussing an incident. Some reviewers take this as a an opportunity to mention the French film Entre les murs (The Class, France 2008) by the director Laurent Cantet (who died too young a couple of weeks ago). There are a couple of parallels certainly , although the students are older in that film. But the class make-up of different ethnicities and languages is something that might be found in any state school in most larger cities in Western Europe. Ms Nowak is at one point challenged by a student who asks her if she is Polish. She replies carefully that she was born in Germany but that her parents migrated from Danzig (Gdansk) after 1980. She speaks some Polish and also English – she is intending to take the class on a trip to the UK.

One of the school admin staff who becomes involved and, in the background, a parent

If we are looking for similar films, we’ve covered several on this blog. Die Welle (The Wave, Germany 2008) also has some parallels in relation to one teacher and his class exploring ethics and personal behaviour, though again the students are older. The Lesson (Urok, Bulgaria-Greece 2014) has a twist on the theft narrative and Class Enemy (Razredni sovraznik, Slovenia 2013) again has a similar mix of student backgrounds and a focus on a new teacher who stirs things up. A film I can think of that has younger students is the wonderful Monsieur Lazhar (Canada 2011), but in that case the students are primary school children and he is an Algerian asylum seeker. The questioning of school procedures is also a major feature of Kore-eda Hirokazu’s film Monster (Japan 2023) and the children in that film are nearer in age to this German film. But Monster is somehow ‘bigger’ than a school-based film. German films in particular show aspects of school life that I always find intriguing. The Audition (2019) and I Was Home . . . But (2019) are other good examples.

One of the key actors in the drama. Oskar is one of Carla’s students, intelligent and perceptive but self-willed and fearless. Does she get her approach right?

When we do get the chance to see Ms Nowak actually teaching, she takes the students through a maths question. Like one of the parents later, I am at a loss to understand much of what is taught in the modern Maths curriculum, but this seems to raise the question about what defines a ‘proof’ in Maths. As such that could be seen as a narrative quest in this film with various investigations to find out who might be a thief and what is acceptable as a procedure to find the ‘truth’. Once again this doesn’t really carry through to a conclusion.

Carla in the gym. An example of the her freedom and joy in teaching or an ironic image that captures her difficult position?

The Teachers’ Lounge was one of the five nominees for the Oscar for ‘International Feature Film’ in 2024. I’m not sure if it should have been on that list but it is undeniable that I was on the edge of my seat for most of the film and fully engaged for all 98 minutes. It certainly works as a thriller in terms of what might happen next. It also raises plenty of questions about schooling and ethics. I’m always suspicious of ‘zero tolerance policies’ and I think schools need more tolerance and humanity rather than too many ‘codes of conduct’ but it all makes for a good discussion. I’ll be looking out for Leonie Benesch in future films (she was also in The White Ribbon in 2009). I should also point out that the film is presented in the Academy ratio of 1.37:1, though after a few minutes I forgot about that completely. It’s a good film and very much recommended. It’s a Curzon release in the UK and available on Curzon Home as well as Apple and Amazon. It should still be in some cinemas in the UK.