A worthy contender for Best International Film at this year’s Oscars, THE TEACHERS’ LOUNGE sees the class room turned into a clash room with a flash point of accusation, an accentuation of cancel culture, an acceleration of menace.

Carla Nowak (Leonie Benesch) is a dedicated, idealistic young teacher in her first job at a German school. Her relationship with her seventh-grade students, whom she infantalises somewhat, is put under stress when a series of thefts occur, and a staff investigation leads to accusations and mistrust among outraged parents, opinionated colleagues, and angry students.

A kid from a Turkish background is fingered for the felony and that raises hackles of race and class discrimination, cultural profiling of the most perfidious.

Carla connives to set a trap by leaving her lap top camera on to see if she can catch the real culprit.

On flimsy photographic evidence, she then accuses a staff member of pilfering from her purse and the pussy is fully out of the bag and prosecuting the pigeons. The staff member is also the mother of a student in Carla’s class so the tensions are internal on a myriad of fronts.

Caught in the middle of these complex dynamics, Carla tries to mediate, but her idealism and actions simply serve as a shovel with which to dig an ever deepening hole.

Written by Ilker Catak and written by him and Johannes Duncker, THE TEACHERS’ LOUNGE, Leonie Benesch as Carla Nowak takes us on a steep learning curve around the pernicious road to hell that was paved with good intentions.

Benesch embodies that grand vision bursting with young arrogance and pride on how she can apply her theoretical ideas in the classroom, whose first misstep multiplies to provide kindling for a bonfire of anxieties.

From the valiant to the vulnerable, it’s a vertiginous fall, and the film develops the complex nature of teaching and schools, where the learning never stops.