Class (2009)

"...the most realistic film about teaching that you're ever likely to see.  Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle
"...It's unmissable.  Peter Travers, Rolling Stone
"It is uncannily convincing.  Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

Editor's Note Winner of the Palme d'Or at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival, master French director Laurent Cantet's THE CLASS is an absorbing journey into a multicultural high school in Paris over the course of a school year. François Begaudeau--an actual teacher and the author upon whose work the film was based--is utterly convincing as François, an openminded teacher in charge of a classroom of youngsters from a wide variety of backgrounds. Of course, the mere fact that he's older and in a position of authority causes his students to challenge him on many occasions. François is stuck in the middle. In the teacher conferences, he butts heads with the harsher adults who don't appear to have any sympathy for their students. In class, his attempts to be lenient and understanding are somehow misinterpreted and he finds himself arguing with the kids that he so clearly wants to help. As the school year progresses, tensions rise, until François finds himself in a position he never imagined he'd be in. Unlike his more formally written early films like HUMAN RESOURCES and TIME OUT, Cantet proves that he has an ability to work in a more improvisational manner. Shooting on HD and working with a cast of young non-actors, he allows THE CLASS to breathe, resulting in a fictional drama that has the spirit and energy of a documentary. His startlingly assured ensemble brings the new, culturally diverse France of the early 21st century to striking life.

	Olivier Dupeyron
	Laura Baquela
	Dalla Doucoure
	Patrick Dureuil
	Cherif Bounaidja Rachedi
	Vincent Caire
	Arthur Fogel
	Nassim Amrabt
	François Begaudeau
	Juliette Demaille
	François Begaudeau - Screenwriter
	Caroline Benjo - Producer
	Pierre Milon - Director of Photography
	Georgi Lazarevski - Director of Photography
	François Begaudeau - Source Writer
	Catherine Pujol - Director of Photography
	Barbara Letellier - Producer
	Laurent Cantet - Screenwriter
	Robin Campillo - Screenwriter
	Simon Amal - Producer
	Carole Scotta - Producer
	Laurent Cantet - Director

Box Office
5 stars out of 5 -- "[I]t's a fantastic example of vérité filmmaking that gains much of its power from its verisimilitude....In mesmerizing fashion, Cantet and Bégaudeau have molded material taken from reality into a resonant work of art." 12/01/2008 p.34

Film Comment
"The greatest pleasure in THE CLASS is seeing an actual teacher -- a skilled, creative teacher -- at work....Cantet orchestrates the myriad conflicts that arise within and among everyone involved with intelligence and subtlety. THE CLASS is thoroughly absorbing from beginning to end." 01/01/2009

Entertainment Weekly
Included in Entertainment Weekly's 2008 Films Of The Year -- "THE CLASS becomes the most revealing inspirational-teacher film ever made, a moving and memorable look at what knowledge really is." 12/26/2008

USA Today
"[A] thought-provoking film. Told in a quasi-documentary style, THE CLASS is tightly focused on the struggles, squabbles and occasional triumphs of a Parisian high school teacher and his ethnically diverse class." 01/30/2009

Entertainment Weekly
"THE CLASS is one of the most alive and engrossing movies ever to take on the rich, infinitely renewable topic of school-as-life, and make it feel real. Unscripted. And above all, honest." -- Grade: A 02/05/2009

Chicago Sun-Times
4 stars out of 4 -- "It is about the power struggle between a teacher who wants to do good and students who disagree about what 'good' is." 02/06/2009

Wall Street Journal
"If the movie looks like a documentary, it feels like what it is: a powerful work that mixes fact and fiction in the service of truth." 02/05/2009

Total Film
4 stars out of 5 -- "[The film] feels effortlessly convincing....Not since Bertrand Tavernier's 1999 CA COMMENCE AUJOURD'HUI have we seen a school this real on screen." 03/01/2009

Empire
4 stars out of 5 -- "The debuting Begaudeau ably captures the enthusiasm and discomfort of an idealist....The resulting stand-offs are tense, amusing and never anything less than authentic." 03/01/2009

Chicago Sun-Times
Included in Chicago Sun-Times's "The Best Foreign Films Of 2009" -- "[THE CLASS acheives] an uncanny spontaneity and realism." 12/27/2009