Screens/Reviews

The Teachers’ Lounge
Where: In theatres
What: Movie, 98 mins.
When: Fri., Jan. 19
Genre: Drama
Rating: NNNN (out of 5)
Why you should watch: Gripping film sees well-intentioned middle-school teacher join in spiralling collection of wrong decisions fuelled by suspicion and bad choices where students pay the price — and fight back.

A GRIPPING, morally complex and extremely well-acted look at how small incidents at a German middle school spiral into a web of mistrust and accusations with no real heroes and no easy answers.

The cast is uniformly excellent with the children all providing impressive performances, mustering the somewhat powerless indignation of adolescents at the failings of the adults around them.

One of teacher Carla Nowak’s (Leonie Benesch) students, the child of immigrant parents, is unfairly accused of stealing, unleashing a spiralling series of bad decisions from all of the adults including Nowak and her Teachers’ Lounge colleagues. Suspicion flies around like an out-of-control fire hose and a beloved school administrator Frederike Kuhn (Eva Löbau) is accused of a crime with damning, though unscrupulously obtained, evidence.

Kuhn’s son, Oskar (Leonard Stettnisch) one of Novak’s favourites, spins out at the “injustice” directed at his mom, recruiting other students to challenge her suspension. Like the film’s other young actors, Stettnisch says a lot through silence, his smirks and blank looks screaming dissent, insolence and injustice.

It’s a film where each bad action is regretted almost immediately, followed by equally inept efforts to correct the damage. Benesch was duly celebrated for her role in the Oscar-nominated film The White Ribbon (2009) with The Teachers’ Lounge likely to get similar attention. It’s Germany’s entry in the Oscars and has been short-listed for Best International Feature Film and had major buzz at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival.

Benesch’s quietly desperate and ill-fated efforts to do the right thing and stuff the genie of accusation back in the bottle make for gripping filmmaking. The clumsy ass-covering and pettiness of her fellow teachers, all certain they have the best intentions, feels painfully real with the students bringing the only wisdom and loyalty to the tortured proceedings.

The architecture, like the staff, is well-intentioned: set in an airy, mid-century modern school, with wide staircases and floor-to-ceiling windows, it’s so perfect you can almost smell the pencil shavings. The Teachers’ Lounge explores the secrets that can congeal in even the most open spaces.