Leonie Benesch as teacher Carla Nowak, in The Teachers Lounge. Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics
There is something going on in the teachers’ lounge, which goes way beyond school walls, in the thriller-like German drama The Teachers Lounge. With high tensions and a dark comedy undercurrent, The Teachers Lounge is about more than the classroom, as the best of intentions gone horribly wrong. The powerful, jarring drama is also an Oscar nominee for Best International Film.
The story takes place in a middle school, where a series of thefts has the staff on edge but the drama is really a parable about modern society at large. The Teachers also flips the expectations of movies about teachers, where the idealistic teacher breaks through the strictures of the school to triumph and change students’ lives.
In the teachers’ lounge of this nice but ordinary German middle school, the gossip is flying, particularly...
There is something going on in the teachers’ lounge, which goes way beyond school walls, in the thriller-like German drama The Teachers Lounge. With high tensions and a dark comedy undercurrent, The Teachers Lounge is about more than the classroom, as the best of intentions gone horribly wrong. The powerful, jarring drama is also an Oscar nominee for Best International Film.
The story takes place in a middle school, where a series of thefts has the staff on edge but the drama is really a parable about modern society at large. The Teachers also flips the expectations of movies about teachers, where the idealistic teacher breaks through the strictures of the school to triumph and change students’ lives.
In the teachers’ lounge of this nice but ordinary German middle school, the gossip is flying, particularly...
- 2/9/2024
- by Cate Marquis
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
Chicago – Public education is in the fight of its life. As curriculums are determined more through the state, parents and politics, the local authority of a child’s educator is being consistently diminished. This subject is the centerpiece of “The Teacher’s Lounge,” co-written and directed by German/Turkish filmmaker Ilker Çatak.
Rating: 4.5/5.0
Carla (Leonie Benesch) is a dedicated, idealistic young teacher in her first job at a German middle school. Her relaxed rapport with her seventh-grade students is put under stress when a series of thefts occur at the school, and a staff investigation leads to accusations and mistrust among outraged parents, opinionated colleagues, and angry students. Caught in the middle of these complex dynamics, Carla tries to mediate … but the more she tries to do everything right, the more desperate her position becomes. The film has a wide release on January 19th, 2024.
’The Teachers’ Lounge,’ Co-Written/Directed by Ilker...
Rating: 4.5/5.0
Carla (Leonie Benesch) is a dedicated, idealistic young teacher in her first job at a German middle school. Her relaxed rapport with her seventh-grade students is put under stress when a series of thefts occur at the school, and a staff investigation leads to accusations and mistrust among outraged parents, opinionated colleagues, and angry students. Caught in the middle of these complex dynamics, Carla tries to mediate … but the more she tries to do everything right, the more desperate her position becomes. The film has a wide release on January 19th, 2024.
’The Teachers’ Lounge,’ Co-Written/Directed by Ilker...
- 1/17/2024
- by adam@hollywoodchicago.com (Adam Fendelman)
- HollywoodChicago.com
The official German Oscar entry for Best International Feature is an insular, pulse-pounding thriller set within the confines of a school that, for cinematic purposes, doubles as a microcosm of society in general circa 2023 where facts don’t matter, misinformation is rampant, suspicions run hot, divisions run deep, racism still rears its ugly head, and no one can be quite sure where, and even if they want to, fit in.
A critical hit beginning at Berlin, and then winning much talk at Telluride, Toronto and AFI festivals, this fascinating movie is a Blackboard Jungle of a different stripe, but still one that puts a critical finger on our educational institutions by way of the human scope. That it is shot (by cinematographer Judity Kaufmann) in a claustrophobic 4:3 aspect ratio only adds to the tension created by co-writer (with Johannes Duncker) and director Ilker Çatak (a past student Academy Award...
A critical hit beginning at Berlin, and then winning much talk at Telluride, Toronto and AFI festivals, this fascinating movie is a Blackboard Jungle of a different stripe, but still one that puts a critical finger on our educational institutions by way of the human scope. That it is shot (by cinematographer Judity Kaufmann) in a claustrophobic 4:3 aspect ratio only adds to the tension created by co-writer (with Johannes Duncker) and director Ilker Çatak (a past student Academy Award...
- 12/15/2023
- by Pete Hammond
- Deadline Film + TV
At the large, modern school where the contentious events of The Teachers’ Lounge unfurl, Carla Nowak is the newbie instructor, fresh-faced and eager. By the end of the film, she’s more chastened and anxious than bursting with gung-ho spirit — which is not to say she’s been defeated by the insanity around her. But she has learned a thing or two about the absurdity of organizational politics in the digital age of the antisocial socials, laid bare in İlker Çatak’s pointed yet never simplistic drama.
The outside world is barely glimpsed in the movie, and the microcosmic significance of the school premises, somewhere in Germany, couldn’t be clearer. As a smaller version of a contemporary tinderbox, the community of teachers, students, administrators and office workers that Çatak and his cast inhabit never feels overly weighted with symbolism. Its powder-keg dynamics are fully alive and infuriating, even as they transparently replicate,...
The outside world is barely glimpsed in the movie, and the microcosmic significance of the school premises, somewhere in Germany, couldn’t be clearer. As a smaller version of a contemporary tinderbox, the community of teachers, students, administrators and office workers that Çatak and his cast inhabit never feels overly weighted with symbolism. Its powder-keg dynamics are fully alive and infuriating, even as they transparently replicate,...
- 10/4/2023
- by Sheri Linden
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Los Angeles, Aug 24 (Ians) Signing up for the best International Feature from Germany, the country has picked Ilker Catak’s schoolroom drama ‘The Teachers’ Lounge’ to represent their work for the 2024 Oscars as part of the best international feature category.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, an independent jury picked the feature, which premiered at the Berlin Film Festival this year, from a 12-title shortlist.
‘The Teachers Lounge’ has been a massive hit in Europe and film stars Leonie Benesch, and is produced by Ingo Fliess. The movie had its world premiere in Berlinale’s Panorama section, and won the Label Europa Cinemas prize.
Furthermore, it took five prizes at the German Film Awards, including the Lola in Gold for best feature film, and has been shortlisted for the European Film Award.
THR reported, Leonie Benesch stars in ‘The Teachers Lounge’ as an idealistic and ambitious young teacher who sees her...
According to The Hollywood Reporter, an independent jury picked the feature, which premiered at the Berlin Film Festival this year, from a 12-title shortlist.
‘The Teachers Lounge’ has been a massive hit in Europe and film stars Leonie Benesch, and is produced by Ingo Fliess. The movie had its world premiere in Berlinale’s Panorama section, and won the Label Europa Cinemas prize.
Furthermore, it took five prizes at the German Film Awards, including the Lola in Gold for best feature film, and has been shortlisted for the European Film Award.
THR reported, Leonie Benesch stars in ‘The Teachers Lounge’ as an idealistic and ambitious young teacher who sees her...
- 8/24/2023
- by Agency News Desk
- GlamSham
Germany has picked Ilker Çatak’s schoolroom drama The Teachers’ Lounge to represent the country for the 2024 Oscars in the best international feature category.
An independent jury picked the feature, which premiered at the Berlin Film Festival this year, from a 12-title shortlist.
Leonie Benesch (Babylon Berlin, Around the World in 80 Days) stars in The Teachers’ Lounge as an idealistic and ambitious young teacher who sees her life unravel after a spate of stealing at her school sets off a series of events that bring out the ugliest aspects of her fellow teachers, parents and the pupils themselves. Leonard Stettnisch, Eva Löbau, Michael Klammer, Anne-Kathrin Gummich, Kathrin Wehlisch, Uygar Tamer and Özgür Karadeniz co-star.
The film won the Europa Cinemas Label prize as best European film in Berlin this year and beat out Edward Berger’s four-time Oscar winner All Quiet on the Western Front to take the top...
An independent jury picked the feature, which premiered at the Berlin Film Festival this year, from a 12-title shortlist.
Leonie Benesch (Babylon Berlin, Around the World in 80 Days) stars in The Teachers’ Lounge as an idealistic and ambitious young teacher who sees her life unravel after a spate of stealing at her school sets off a series of events that bring out the ugliest aspects of her fellow teachers, parents and the pupils themselves. Leonard Stettnisch, Eva Löbau, Michael Klammer, Anne-Kathrin Gummich, Kathrin Wehlisch, Uygar Tamer and Özgür Karadeniz co-star.
The film won the Europa Cinemas Label prize as best European film in Berlin this year and beat out Edward Berger’s four-time Oscar winner All Quiet on the Western Front to take the top...
- 8/23/2023
- by Scott Roxborough
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
It might have been a few decades since you left school. You might imagine the modern classroom — especially one in a decently funded, mid-sized German high school — to be as alien to your own educational background as to be unrecognizable. And yet one of the remarkable aspects of İlker Çatak’s highly effective, slow-cooker drama is a strangely specific familiarity. It delivers you directly into a sense memory of chalk dust and boredom, of fidgeting at your desk and gazing longingly through big windows that seem tauntingly designed for exactly that purpose. “The Teachers’ Lounge” is about a lot of things — conformity, rebellion, racism, optics, intergenerational mistrust — but it is also a stark reminder, from both the teacher and the student side, of what school actually was for so many of us: our first and most foundational experience of institutionalization.
The pupils in this particular seventh grade are already, as the film begins,...
The pupils in this particular seventh grade are already, as the film begins,...
- 3/11/2023
- by Jessica Kiang
- Variety Film + TV
İlker Çatak’s The Teachers‘ Lounge, a German drama set in a primary school, has won the Europa Cinemas Label as Best European film in the Panorama section of the 2023 Berlin International Film Festival.
Leonie Benesch (Babylon Berlin, Around the World in 80 Days) stars in The Teacher’s Lounge as an idealistic and ambitious young teacher who finds herself at odds with fellow teachers, parents and an inflexible and frustrating bureaucracy. Leonard Stettnisch, Eva Löbau, Michael Klammer, Anne-Kathrin Gummich, Kathrin Wehlisch, Uygar Tamer, and Özgür Karadeniz co-star.
“The film explores key subjects like the prevalence of bureaucracy in schools and issues of race and class, but above all it is a compelling rollercoaster of a drama,” the Europa Cinemas jury said in a statement.
The Europa Cinemas prize is backed the Europa Cinemas theatre network, an association of independent theater owners, representing more than 3,000 screens in over 700 cities across Europe,...
Leonie Benesch (Babylon Berlin, Around the World in 80 Days) stars in The Teacher’s Lounge as an idealistic and ambitious young teacher who finds herself at odds with fellow teachers, parents and an inflexible and frustrating bureaucracy. Leonard Stettnisch, Eva Löbau, Michael Klammer, Anne-Kathrin Gummich, Kathrin Wehlisch, Uygar Tamer, and Özgür Karadeniz co-star.
“The film explores key subjects like the prevalence of bureaucracy in schools and issues of race and class, but above all it is a compelling rollercoaster of a drama,” the Europa Cinemas jury said in a statement.
The Europa Cinemas prize is backed the Europa Cinemas theatre network, an association of independent theater owners, representing more than 3,000 screens in over 700 cities across Europe,...
- 2/25/2023
- by Scott Roxborough
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Sepideh Farsi’s “La Sirène” (“The Siren”) is opening the Berlin Film Festival’s Panorama strand.
The program, which comprises 35 films from 30 countries, including 28 world premieres and 11 debuts, includes new films by Patric Chiha, İlker Çatak, Frauke Finsterwalder, Maite Alberdi, Milad Alami and Apolline Traoré. They feature a galaxy of well-known protagonists and actors such as Joan Baez, Jafar Panahi, Payman Maadi, George MacKay, Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, Fan Bingbing, Sandra Hüller and Susanne Wolff.
Panorama Selections
“After”
by Anthony Lapia | with Louise Chevillotte, Majd Mastoura, Natalia Wiszniewska
France
World premiere | Debut film
“All the Colours of the World Are Between Black and White”
by Babatunde Apalowo | with Tope Tedela, Riyo David, Martha Ehinome Orhiere, Uchechika Elumelu, Floyd Anekwe
Nigeria
World premiere | Debut film
“And, Towards Happy Alleys”
by Sreemoyee Singh | with Jafar Panahi, Nasrin Soutodeh, Jinous Nazokkar, Farhad Kheradmand, Aida Mohammadkhani
India
World premiere | Debut film | Documentary
“La Bête dans la...
The program, which comprises 35 films from 30 countries, including 28 world premieres and 11 debuts, includes new films by Patric Chiha, İlker Çatak, Frauke Finsterwalder, Maite Alberdi, Milad Alami and Apolline Traoré. They feature a galaxy of well-known protagonists and actors such as Joan Baez, Jafar Panahi, Payman Maadi, George MacKay, Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, Fan Bingbing, Sandra Hüller and Susanne Wolff.
Panorama Selections
“After”
by Anthony Lapia | with Louise Chevillotte, Majd Mastoura, Natalia Wiszniewska
France
World premiere | Debut film
“All the Colours of the World Are Between Black and White”
by Babatunde Apalowo | with Tope Tedela, Riyo David, Martha Ehinome Orhiere, Uchechika Elumelu, Floyd Anekwe
Nigeria
World premiere | Debut film
“And, Towards Happy Alleys”
by Sreemoyee Singh | with Jafar Panahi, Nasrin Soutodeh, Jinous Nazokkar, Farhad Kheradmand, Aida Mohammadkhani
India
World premiere | Debut film | Documentary
“La Bête dans la...
- 1/18/2023
- by Naman Ramachandran
- Variety Film + TV
Berlin-based Films Boutique has acquired “Talking About The Weather,” Annika Pinske’s contemporary debut film which will have its world premiere at the Berlin Film Festival in the Panorama section.
The movie follows Clara, who has left her native East Germany and is living a bohemian life in Berlin, teaching philosophy while finishing her PhD. Between an affair with one of her students and her testy friendship with thesis advisor Margot, she barely has time to see her 15-year-old daughter, who mostly lives with her ex. But when Clara visits her mother for a weekend, she finds herself confronted with her ideal of an unfettered, self-determined life.
Pinske previously worked as creative assistant to German filmmaker Maren Ade (“Toni Erdmann”), as well as theater director René Pollesch. “Talking About The Weather” is Pinske’s graduation film from the German Film and Television Academy (Dffb).
The movie stars “Toni Erdmann” actor Sandra Hüller,...
The movie follows Clara, who has left her native East Germany and is living a bohemian life in Berlin, teaching philosophy while finishing her PhD. Between an affair with one of her students and her testy friendship with thesis advisor Margot, she barely has time to see her 15-year-old daughter, who mostly lives with her ex. But when Clara visits her mother for a weekend, she finds herself confronted with her ideal of an unfettered, self-determined life.
Pinske previously worked as creative assistant to German filmmaker Maren Ade (“Toni Erdmann”), as well as theater director René Pollesch. “Talking About The Weather” is Pinske’s graduation film from the German Film and Television Academy (Dffb).
The movie stars “Toni Erdmann” actor Sandra Hüller,...
- 12/16/2021
- by Elsa Keslassy
- Variety Film + TV
The 2022 Berlin International Film Festival has revealed its first titles, including seven films that have been invited to the Berlinale Special program. You can see the full list of confirmed films below.
Those seven include Peter Flinth’s Against The Ice, starring Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Joe Cole, Heida Reed and Charles Dance, and Laurent Larivière’s About Joan, starring Isabelle Huppert, which both play as Berlinale Special Galas.
The Panorama program has unveiled 13 titles, with Generation confirming eight features, and further films set for Forum and Forum Expanded.
The Panorama strand includes Myanmar Diaries, a doc/feature hybrid from the Myanmar Film Collective that highlights violence suffered by Burmese citizens.
“The pandemic has created distances – not only between people but also the way we see the world. Amongst the 2022 selection are films shot during the pandemic, reflecting on how it feels to be disconnected from others. It is with this first...
Those seven include Peter Flinth’s Against The Ice, starring Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Joe Cole, Heida Reed and Charles Dance, and Laurent Larivière’s About Joan, starring Isabelle Huppert, which both play as Berlinale Special Galas.
The Panorama program has unveiled 13 titles, with Generation confirming eight features, and further films set for Forum and Forum Expanded.
The Panorama strand includes Myanmar Diaries, a doc/feature hybrid from the Myanmar Film Collective that highlights violence suffered by Burmese citizens.
“The pandemic has created distances – not only between people but also the way we see the world. Amongst the 2022 selection are films shot during the pandemic, reflecting on how it feels to be disconnected from others. It is with this first...
- 12/15/2021
- by Tom Grater
- Deadline Film + TV
The Berlin Film Festival has revealed several titles across various programs for the 2022 edition of the festival.
Women directors account for seven of the 13 titles revealed so far in the Panorama section, including U.S. filmmaker Nina Menkes’ “Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power,” emerging German director Annika Pinske’s debut feature “Alle reden übers Wetter” (“Talking About the Weather”), and Maryna Er Gorbach’s Ukrainian war drama “Klondike.”
“The films confirmed so far herald a contemporary, unsparing but also conciliatory cinema in the 2022 Panorama,” said section head Michael Stütz.
Seven films have been unveiled for the festival’s Berlinale Special gala strand, including Peter Flinth’s “Against the Ice,” starring Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Laurent Larivière’s “About Joan,” featuring Isabelle Huppert, and Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s “Gangubai Kathiawadi,” with Alia Bhatt.
“The pandemic has created distances – not only between people but also the way we see the world. Amongst the 2022 selection are films shot during the pandemic,...
Women directors account for seven of the 13 titles revealed so far in the Panorama section, including U.S. filmmaker Nina Menkes’ “Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power,” emerging German director Annika Pinske’s debut feature “Alle reden übers Wetter” (“Talking About the Weather”), and Maryna Er Gorbach’s Ukrainian war drama “Klondike.”
“The films confirmed so far herald a contemporary, unsparing but also conciliatory cinema in the 2022 Panorama,” said section head Michael Stütz.
Seven films have been unveiled for the festival’s Berlinale Special gala strand, including Peter Flinth’s “Against the Ice,” starring Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Laurent Larivière’s “About Joan,” featuring Isabelle Huppert, and Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s “Gangubai Kathiawadi,” with Alia Bhatt.
“The pandemic has created distances – not only between people but also the way we see the world. Amongst the 2022 selection are films shot during the pandemic,...
- 12/15/2021
- by Naman Ramachandran
- Variety Film + TV
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