German director Ilker Çatak likes to recall the saying: "The road to hell is paved with good intentions." His fourth feature film, The Teachers' Lounge, shot behind closed doors in a middle school in Hamburg, raises the question of the excesses of self-righteousness. This breathless school thriller, which will represent Germany at the Oscars on Sunday, March 10, is inspired by a childhood memory of the filmmaker and his co-writer, Johannes Duncker: One day, in physics class, three teachers asked the girls to leave and the boys to open their wallets on the table.

Indeed, the teacher, Carla Nowak, acts in good faith, but others believe they are even more morally upright than her... At times, I feel like we're back in medieval times: an individual judged to have acted wrongly is put on public display and can be scorned by everyone... It's important that cancel culture can offer a second chance, especially since a moral judgment may become outdated ten years later. That said, cancel culture also has its advantages. For example, when Elon Musk makes anti-Semitic remarks, we can decide not to buy his Tesla or browse his platform. It's important to consider each case differently.

Yes, two French films: The Class, by Laurent Cantet [shot in a middle school, Palme d'Or in 2008] and The Measure of a Man, by Stéphane Brizé [the humiliation-filled path of an unemployed man, in 2015]. And then a Belgian film: Le Jeune Ahmed ("Young Ahmed"), by the Dardenne brothers [2019], which notably describes the relationship between a teacher and a pupil. I'd also say that, on a visual level, Elephant, by Gus Van Sant [2003], counted.

Initially, I wanted to film during school hours. I asked several schools in Hamburg for permission, but they all said it was impossible, except during the short vacations, which didn't leave enough time. It's hard to make a film in two weeks. That's when my production manager found an old technological high school just before it was demolished.

There's a horrible prejudice against Poles. Germans think that all Poles are thieves. With my co-writer, Johannes Duncker, we wanted to create a character who is a little ashamed of her heritage. Nowak reminds me of that Polish writer of my generation, 37-year-old Margarete Stokowski (known for her weekly essays for Spiegel Online magazine, where she writes about the current state of feminism in Germany), who knows what it's like to have grown up as a Pole in Germany. At school in Berlin, I tried to hide my Turkish origins, refusing to speak my language. The whole film is about these identity issues. It seemed important to me that the young girl wearing a headscarf in my film should speak perfect German and be a journalist. I wanted to reverse the trend.

You have 26.36% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.