Entre les murs (2008)

Directed by: Laurent Cantet | 128 minutes | drama | Actors: François Bégaudeau, Nassim Amrabt, Laura Baquela, Cherif Bounaïdja Rachedi, Juliette Demaille, Dalla Doucoure, Arthur Fogel, Damien Gomes, Louise Grinberg, Qifei Huang, Wei Huang, Franck Keïta, Henriette Kasaruhanda, Lucie Landrevie, Agame, Rabah Naït Oufella, Carl Nanor, Esméralda Ouertani, Burak Özyilmaz, Eva Paradiso, Rachel Régulier, Angélica Sancio, Samantha Soupirot, Boubacar Touré, Justine Wu, Atouma Dioumassy, ​​Nitany Gueyes, Vincent Caire, Olivier Dupeyron, Patrick Durotheée Guilbot, Cécile Lagarde,Anne Langlois, Yvette Mournetas, Vincent Robert, Anne Wallimann-Charpentier, Julie Athenol, Jean-Michel Simonet, Olivier Pasquier, Stéphane Longour, Abdoul Drahamane Sissoko, Aline Zimierski, Silma Aktar, Marie-Antoinette Sorrente, Fatoumata Cheick Baba Doumbia, Khalid Amrabt, Adeline Fogel, Lingfen Huang, Wenlong Huang, Sezer Ozyilmaz, Marie-Laure Bulliard, Robert Demaille, Céline Spang

‘Entre les murs’ is a film that can best be described as a docudrama. The style of filming is strongly documentary and has the content of a strong psychological drama about the school as a microcosm. ‘Entre les Murs’ won the Palme d’Or at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival. Director Laurent Cantet achieved international fame in 2005 with what some consider controversial film ‘Vers le Sud’ (2005), a confrontational story about the overriding greed of the three middle-aged women who go on holiday in Haiti and ‘enjoy’ themselves there with the male population.

‘Entre les murs’ is a film about school life and was also shot entirely in the school building. In the film, director Cantet wanted to portray the school as a sound box, a place full of turbulence, where contemporary social developments occur in all their forms: equal or unequal opportunities, equality and inequality in power, cultural and social integration and exclusion. The film is based on a book by François Begadeau, but for the screenplay a number of situations have been taken from the book to make it into fiction. The film impresses above all with its atmosphere and tone. Where in ‘Être et avoir’ the situation was in the countryside with a completely different, more charming-looking problem, in ‘Entre les murs’ it is precisely the problem of the big city and the diversity of the population that plays an important role. Begadeau has been a teacher himself and has drawn on his own experiences for the book. Today he is best known as a writer, publicist, critic and has a column on football in the French newspaper Le Monde.

In the film, the story centers on a class of about fourteen-year-olds in the 20th arrondissement of Paris. The new school year begins and François is a teacher who tries to pass on that mutual respect, but also discipline and willingness to tackle are also important conditions in their school environment. François is a French teacher, but also covers subjects such as social studies and social/cultural relations. What is special is that the role of teacher is played by François Begadeau himself.

It is a real multi-cultural class with students from many different countries. Also, all the students in the film are students of the school, even the teachers in the film teach at that school. With the exception of Souleymane’s mother, who has to take on a real role in the film story, the parents are also the real fathers and mothers of the students. So we see a docudrama with real teachers, real students and real parents, except for a few. The story mainly focuses on what goes on in the classroom, the relationships among themselves, the bullying, the discussions, the laughter, in short everything that we can expect in a class. Life outside of school is completely out of the question.

What is special about the set-up is that, although it seems that way, the children are not actually playing themselves, but a situation. Almost all scenes are constructed around situations that have been devised for the sake of the scenario, in which the students themselves have had an important contribution. They were not given a script beforehand, but came up with dialogues and puns themselves.

The film demands a lot from the viewer because there is an extremely ‘lively’ atmosphere in the classroom and the students also discuss and argue with each other. The discussions with the teacher also do not lie for a moment. This is a lot of fun, these scenes contain a lot of humor and color due to their early street smart wisdom. François in no way avoids sensitive topics in the conversations with the students. He provokes and confronts them, challenges them, gives them the floor and the students are also involved in the discussions. The struggle to maintain order is sometimes fierce, but François is the type of teacher who has the gift of ‘directing’ these students. Yet he is not always in control of the situation and he has to look for arguments, buried under a barrage of questions. We see that there are other examples of this in the teacher’s room, where people sometimes storm in completely burned out.

During the school year, problems arise that can mainly be traced back to cultural background differences and that are also used by the students to confront François with what they consider to be a condescending attitude at the time. In addition, a conflict arises with one of the students. Two girls/class representatives who attended a teachers’ meeting literally clapped from the school and said that François had spoken derogatoryly about one of the students. This leads to an explosion in the classroom and the student is sent away. Then follows a meeting of the Disciplinary Committee, where we are presented with a dire situation that his mother has to appear who does not understand French and where the son has to translate what the meeting decides about him. In this part the film gives us a nice insight into the relationships that will then apply.

Music is completely absent in the film, which only makes the sense of reality stronger. By filming with three cameras, one could always be aimed at the teacher, a second at the student who had to carry the scene at that moment and a third to observe the immediate environment.

The film never judges. Weaknesses or moments of teacher and students are shown in plain sight, it is a matter of recording what happens in a school class. Impressive and incredibly intense acting. Although it can get intense, the director also wanted to show that there are also many moments of great satisfaction (reciprocal). He has completely succeeded in that. The film has, however you want to see it, mainly a positive message.

Exciting, intriguing, confrontational, but above all superior and high quality! The energy splashes off the screen. ‘Entre les murs’ is a must for everything and everyone who has to do with education and also for every lover of cinema!