Screening times:
Friday, February 23, 6:30 PM - SOLD OUT
Friday, February 23, 8:45 PM - Half-capacity screening
Sunday, February 25, 6:30 PM - SOLD OUT
İlker Çatak | Germany | 2023 | 95m | German with English subtitles
with Leonie Benesch, Michael Klammer, Rafael Stachowiak, Eva Löbau
Carla Nowak is a dedicated gym and math teacher, a new hire at her school. She's idealistic and hard working, in stark contrast to some of her colleagues. When a series of thefts occur at the school and one of her students is suspected, she investigates the matter on her own, but makes a choice that has unexpected reverberations. As Carla attempts to mediate between outraged parents, cynical colleagues and aggressive, entitled students, she butts her heads against the structures and politics of the educational system. The more she clings to her values, the more desperate her situation becomes.
With The Teachers’ Lounge, award-winning director İlker Çatak (I Was, I Am, I Will Be) creates an uncompromising, nuanced work about the pedagogical institution as a microcosm of society. As Carla Nowak, Leonie Benesch (The White Ribbon, Babylon Berlin) gives a performance where you're never in doubt about what she's feeling, even as the film challenges us to sympathize with her decision-making. The Teacher's Lounge is a riveting study of power dynamics, exploring themes of truth, justice, racism, cancel culture, education, the media and children’s rights.
The Teachers’ Lounge is paced and edited like a thriller, pivoting on stakes that never get that high but still ratchet up the tension to places of genuine discomfort and, in places, humour. It also does an excellent job managing its ambiguities, asking more questions than providing answers but still managing to satisfy as an unusually suspenseful movie.
"Basically, The Teachers’ Lounge is a film about our agitated society," says the director. "No one tackles the root of the problem; everyone just talks about what should be done. It is an apt commentary on our present."
Nominated for Best International Feature Film at this year's Academy Awards
"A teacher-on-a-tightrope thriller that is gripping, intense and moving." -Radheyan Simonpillai, CTV's Your Morning
"What Carla discovers, as countless generations of teachers before her have, is how the realities of the job force her to navigate between her best intentions and a system that sets her up for failure." -Adam Mullins-Khatib, Chicago Reader
"Overall, The Teachers' Lounge is a can't-miss mystery that proves not everything that happens in the teachers' lounge, stays in the teachers' lounge." -Meredith G. White, Arizona Republic
Cicae Art Cinema Prizes - Berlin International Film Festival
Best Fiction Film, Best Director, Best Editing - German Film Awards
Top Five International Films - National Board of Review
Tickets $8.75 ($8 cash at the door if available).
SOLD OUT
SOLD OUT
Half capacity
