NZIFF: The Teachers' Lounge

Driven by a captivating central performance, this unsettling Oscar-nominated classroom thriller thoughtfully probes the grey area of student care versus culpability, and to what degree our systems promote or constrain our humanity.

School can be awkward at the best of times, and confronting illegal or unacceptable behaviour is sure to be a fraught affair. How do you balance institutional and individual needs, personal safety and wellbeing? And what about any inherent power dynamics at play?

With deft handling of complex relational issues, The Teachers’ Lounge utilises a string of petty thefts at a German secondary school as the catalyst to explore a range of broader social issues – racial prejudice, socio-economic status, institutional conformity –and Germany’s troubled history, a spectre always lurking at the film’s edge.

Rising Turkish-German filmmaker İlker Çatak maintains a taut tone throughout, aided by smart framing of closed-in school halls, a cool colour palette, and a disquieting score. Leonie Benesch (whom some may recognise from The Crown or Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon) is incisive and expressive as idealist immigrant teacher Carla Nowak. Benesch conveys great empathy, contrasted by an officious workplace and jaded colleagues, plus a mounting sense of unease as Carla fails to navigate a “good path” through quickly crumbling circumstances. Çatak’s screenplay makes provocative use of the film’s relatable context, resulting in a gripping human drama. — Jacob Powell