By Matthew Moorcroft

Solid Recommendation

• Directed by Ilker Catak
• Starring Leonie Benesch, Michael Klammer, Rafael Stachowiak, Anne-Kathrin Gummich
• Not Rated

This piece was written during the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike. Without the labor of the actors currently on strike, the film being covered here wouldn’t exist.

Being a teacher is pretty damn stressful right?

Or at least, hopefully not as stressful as Carla’s teaching job, which beyond the usual issues of navigating a classroom of 25 kids, is also in the middle of a series of thefts that have going around the faculty. The faculty, of course, blames a student, as that seems to be the most obvious culprit on paper, but Carla’s own idealism – and willingness to do good by her students – means she suspects it’s elsewhere. This is the base setup for The Teachers’ Lounge, a small, tight thriller from Germany that opts to ask the age old question of “what if TAR but in a classroom?”.

If that seems like a bizarre pitch, it’s cause it is, and the film’s insistence at playing it completely straight makes The Teachers’ Lounge one of the more fascinating experiments in this recent genre of career turned hellscape that so many are attempting to emulate at the moment. What starts as a story of mistaken identity turns into a workplace drama about uncovering the truth of who did what, ending in an almost thriller esqe scenario where a teacher is tormented by a kid who feels he was wronged. This blending of tones and acts gives The Teachers’ Lounge a unique perspective among the glut of potential International Feature nominees, and will certainly make it standout amongst the crowd for those looking for a more traditional genre picture to get in without losing it’s arthouse credibility.

Ultimately, The Teachers’ Lounge is a film about escalation and how far things can go before they are unsalvageable. Each scene a new complication emerges, a new clink in the machine, a new person against our lead, who is still trying to keep her own sanity intact. Her class of kids is smarter then they look, if still just kids, so while they don’t know specifics they figure out something is wrong quite quickly and take advantage of it for themselves. A school newspaper interview that feels like something out of a courtroom drama is the highlight of this – a purposefully absurd scenario that plays into the growing paranoia of our lead protagonist.

Said escalation is meant to be a representation of the commentary going on here, which is mostly a vague posturing about power structures and how they can break down quickly. Honestly it’s mostly background noise – there to give the movie some kind of greater point for you to mull over – but it has very little “new” to actually say on the matter. The closest it comes is how it examines the broken school system and how it’s all built on favoritism, power struggles, and promotions just like every other job at the detriment to the kids that are learning, but ultimately it has far more interest in it’s mind of focusing on the inherent slow burn, single chamber drama that’s in the frame at all times.

And as a that, yeah, it really works! It’s gripping throughout it’s short 98 minute runtime, Benesch’s performance really is as good as you’ve heard, and the film ends on a strong, if somewhat silly, note. As an exercise in tonal command and shot composition, it’s pretty much exactly what you would want and doubles down on those aspects, and sometimes that’s really all you need to ask for in a film. It gets particularly good when the film is focusing on the kids, mainly thanks to Ilker Catak’s uncanny ability to get really, really good performances out of his child actors.

I don’t think The Teachers’ Lounge is going to blow anybody away frankly, but as a tense, tight showcase of talent and tension, it’s pretty much the best you could ask for from this premise and idea. Germany clearly has a ton of faith in it come awards season, and it certainly has a chance to surprise, but as it stands it’s simply just a solid thriller with a little bit more on it’s mind then simply “man, it sucks to be a teacher huh?”.