‘Teachers’ Room’, the Oscar-nominated German film, explores racism and authority – 2024-02-14 12:05:58

At twelve years old Ilker Catak He was the typical class troublemaker, he hated authority and everything seemed unfair to him. Some of the memories of him have landed on ‘Teacher’s room’a thriller in the classroom that reflects on the ‘fake news’ crisis, racism and intergenerational conflicts.

Çatak (Berlin, 1984), son of Turkish immigrants, has not quite assimilated the success of what is already his fourth feature film as a director, the great winner in the latest German film awards and one of the five nominated for the Oscar for best international film .

«I guess it has connected with the spirit of the times»he tells EFE during a visit to Madrid on the occasion of the premiere in Spain on February 2. «I think that the theme of the search for truth is something that will remain with us in the coming years, with the rise of artificial intelligence»he points out.

The fact that another of the year’s European films, ‘Anatomy of a Fall’ by French director Justine Triet, coincides with this underlying theme, the difficulty of understanding and sticking to the truth and the intrusion of prejudice, reinforces the thesis. from Çatak.

“We live in crazy times, the truth is increasingly elusive, especially since Trump came to power in the United States we enter into this story of fake news and fact checking,” he points out.

It’s also something he reflected on during the pandemic, when he wrote the script with Johannes Duncker. “Everyone was arguing about whether or not to get vaccinated, there were all kinds of opinions and the truth became a matter of belief.”

His story, however, is very different from Triet’s. Carla Nowak (Leonie Benesch) is an idealistic math and gym teacher at a high school who, when a series of robberies occur and one of the students is suspected, decides to get to the bottom of the matter on her own.

In her efforts she will gradually find herself cornered by outraged parents, her corporatist colleagues and increasingly aggressive students. And there is one of Çatak’s successes, which moves away from the classic drama in the classrooms to tend towards the thriller, with a growing oppressive atmosphere.

Problems of understanding between generations

There is a moment in the film when a group of students, tired of having information hidden from them, rise up against the system through the school newspaper and, in order to make themselves heard, fall into sensationalism.

Çatak explains that he wanted to address the problems of understanding between generations, inspired by the incomprehension that youth environmental activism has generated in recent years, with actions such as throwing red paint on works of art in museums.

«When writing I was thinking about movements like Fridays for Future, which reproach the elderly for having ruined the planet and their way of making themselves heard is sometimes misunderstood, but it is about raising awareness».

Don’t fall into victimhood

In the midst of his turbulent adolescence, Çatak remembers the day when his Latin teacher gave him a bad grade, in his opinion unfairly, and he called him a “Nazi.”

“Of course he called my parents and, when I got home, they told me I should apologize,” he says. “I refused, I thought the teacher hated me for being Turkish, and I perfectly remember my father telling me: You are not a victim, it is not because you are Turkish, it is because you have made a mistake.”

Maintaining that perspective in the film was essential for Çatak, who understands that defending diversity should not mean falling into victimhood or simplification.

«Many times you come across people asking you not to say this or that because someone might feel hurt, and that’s fine, but you shouldn’t exaggerate this tendency to be offended».

He remembers that recently, in a talk at the university where he teaches, he said that his next film, which he will shoot in Turkey, is about a woman about to enter menopause and a girl in the audience was offended by a man addressing that. issue.

«How is it possible – he asks – that someone who talks about diversity has that binary thinking? “I make films to understand the world, not simply to tell my own story about Turkish and German men, we need to expand our minds and sometimes I feel that with the whole issue of diversity people shrink their perspectives.”. EFE (I)