“Vibrant, amazingly acted and absolutely riveting.”
— Aaron Yap, realgroove.co.nz

The Class is one of the marvels of the last year, winner of the Palme d’Or for Best Film at Cannes in 2008 and featured on virtually every international critic’s Ten-Best list. A fizzing blend of documentary authenticity and dramatic effect, the film centres on a switched-on young teacher. His determination to inculcate self-worth and communal values in his students becomes a multi-fronted battle of wits with several individuals in his class who feel patronized. French teacher François Bégaudeau, who, in 2006, published a book chronicling a year in a Paris public school, plays himself. He and Cantet reshaped the book into a drama centering on the teacher and several of the most demanding students in his multi-ethnic class. All are played by real students, and though not the same kids Bégaudeau wrote about, they take to the camera with such poise and alacrity that their own jockeying for position seems indistinguishable from the parts they are playing.

“The day-to-day difficulties and occasional exhilarations of urban multi-ethnic education have never been dramatized with half the power or the humor that the director Laurent Cantet (Time Out) brings to them in The Class... 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.” — David Denby, New Yorker

“This acutely insightful and realistic depiction of a year in a tough, multi-ethnic Paris school is nothing short of uncanny in the accuracy with which it captures the extremely subtle prejudices and misunderstandings that can underlie cross-cultural interaction. It’s also a devastating depiction of how fear can make even the best-intentioned return to a default of self-preservation, as the tide of our sympathy turns slowly away from teacher Mr Marin, who is refreshingly not an inspirational saint.” — Carmen Grey, Sight & Sound

“Cantet’s real-time classroom scenes are revelations: They make you understand that teaching is moment to moment, an endless series of negotiations that hang on intangibles – on imagination and empathy and the struggle to stay centered. This is a remarkable movie.” — David Edelstein, New York

“In its appraising reserve, its avoidance of sentimentality, its insistence on the quotidian realities of the faltering educational system, The Class comes – quietly – as close to greatness as any movie released this year.” — Richard Shickel, Time