Synopsis
Teacher and novelist François Bégaudeau plays a version of himself as he negotiates a year with his racially mixed students from a tough Parisian neighborhood.
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Cast
- François BégaudeauFrançois Marin, head teacher
- Arthur FogelArthur, student
- Damien GomesDamien, student
- Esmeralda OuertaniEsmeralda, student
- Rachel RegulierKhoumba, student
- Louise GrinbergLouise, student
- Rabah Nait OufellaRabah, student
- Franck KeïtaSouleyman, student
- Agame Malembo-EmeneAgame, student
- Angélica SancioAngélica, student
Recommendations
- 100
The New Yorker
I would be surprised if this brilliant and touching film didn't become required viewing for teachers all over the United States. Everyone else should see it as well--it's a wonderful movie. - 100
Variety
Talky in the best sense, the film exhilarates with its lively, authentic classroom banter while its emotional undercurrents build steadily but almost imperceptibly over a swift 129 minutes. One of the most substantive and purely entertaining movies in competition at Cannes this year. - 100
Time
It is hard to think of another film more tightly autobiographical than this one. It's even harder to think of other films that build so gripping a narrative out of a string of comparatively minor and disparate incidents. - 100
Slate
This unassuming movie will nail you to your seat. - 91
The A.V. Club
The beauty of The Class is that it puts the lie to the one-teacher-can-make-a-difference myth propagated by so many other films. - 90
Salon
The Class is a lovely, exhilarating work about the ways in which failure and frustration can open the pathways through which we make sense out of life. - 90
Village Voice
For anyone who loves language, this cut-and-thrust is a heady delight, so rich and free-flowing in its rhythms that it's hard to decide whether what we're seeing is a vérité-style documentary or a realist drama. - 90
Los Angeles Times
The reality of François' classroom is so intense that it holds our interest even while the film's dramatic focus is building so quietly under the surface that we don't notice it at first.
