The Teacher’s Lounge:  A Microcosm of Cultural Fear in the Classroom.

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MOVIE INFO VIA ROTTEN TOMATOES:

Carla Nowak, a dedicated sports and math teacher, starts her first job at a high school. She stands out among the new staff because of her idealism. When a series of thefts occur at the school and one of her students is suspected, she decides to get to the bottom of the matter on her own. Carla tries to mediate between outraged parents, opinionated colleagues and aggressive students, but is relentlessly confronted with the structures of the school system. The more desperately she tries to do everything right, the more the young teacher threatens to break.

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REVIEW:

The Teacher’s Lounge (Germany’s international feature film entry to the Academy Awards) shows how learning how to teach is not the same as knowing how to teach.  Learning involves theory and rote, knowing involves experience.  Carla Nowak (Leonie Benesch) a new sixth grade teacher in a German school is about to learn how difficult it will be to properly manage a classroom. 

Here, the teaching experience is not the difference maker or inspiring experience that most Hollywood films make of it.  It’s not even Abbott Elementary frustrating and rewarding.  Here, the new teachers good intentions are thwarted by an educational bureaucracy and recalcitrant students that know how to take advantage of the rules.  The students are often meaner and smarter. 

Nowak’s classroom is a mixture of high achievers, goody two shoers, slackers, class clowns and thugs.  There’s a thief running around and getting others to take the fall.  Frustrated teachers resort to using cop interrogation techniques to get those who may know to snitch.  The fall guy is a Turkish immigrant student, Ali (Can Rodenbostell).  The investigation proves Ali innocent but exposes the faculty to charges of racial profiling and racism.  The whole school is almost a prison with zero tolerance rules and strict discipline and routines where the students are the convicts and the faculty the wardens.  Nowak’s attempt to introduce fairness, freedom of speech and the press, some semblance of self-governance are doomed to fail. 

Misinformation, gossip, slanted journalism from the students, and parental obstruction is the standard.  There are voluntarily implied illegal searches.  Students and parents use cell phones and chat for surveillance.  The class paper is run by misguided Woodward-Bernstein’s incapable of seeing beyond their side of the story. It’s a mess and a microcosmic allegory for the macrocosmic rot that is society. Nowak’s good attempts are always going sideways, creating escalating catastrophe on catastrophe. 

The Teacher’s Lounge shows how it’s not easy to maintain social harmony.  The tug-of-war between  authoritarian principles and anarchy is not easy to mediate into an acceptable compromise.  The kids here are very tuned in to the issues and will fight back. They know how to verbalize and extend their limited power.  They’ve learned well from both parents and teachers.  The tragedy is that the teachers have forgotten their childhood and sympathy. 

The Teacher’s Lounge gets a 3.5/5 or a B+.

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CREDITS:

Directed by

İlker Çatak

Written by

• Johannes Duncker
• İlker Çatak

Produced by

Ingo Fliess

Starring

• Leonie Benesch
• Leonard Stettnisch
• Eva Löbau
• Michael Klammer
• Rafael Stachowiak
• Sarah Bauerett
• Kathrin Wehlisch
• Anne-Kathrin Gummich

Cinematography

Judith Kaufmann

Edited by

Gesa Jäger

Music by

Marvin Miller

Production

companies

• if… Productions
• ZDF
• Arte

Distributed by

Alamode Film

Release dates

• 18 February 2023(Berlin)
• 4 May 2023(Germany)

Running time

99 minutes[1]

Country

Germany

Languages

• German
• Turkish
• Polish
• English

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