We all have that one day we can look back on with a sense of regret and anxiety. That day where if you had not chosen to do that one particular thing, then the day might have turned out a little bit better, a little less tense. So it is for Carla Nowak (Leonie Benesch), a Polish teacher working at a German high school in İlker Çatak’s The Teachers’ Lounge.

Carla is an idealistic teacher who clearly cares for her students and finds herself, to begin with, politely butting heads with her colleagues’ world-weariness that often comes with working in a job you hate but can’t escape. After a spate of thefts, the school has ramped up its zero-tolerance policy in an attempt to catch the culprit. When the principal (Anne-Kathrin Gummich) and two other teachers falsely accuse a student of Turkish descent in her class, Carla takes it upon herself to catch the thief and, in doing so, exposes herself to a large amount of criticism.

Suspecting that a staff member might be the culprit, Carla uses her laptop camera to set up a sting in the staff room. Having appeared to have caught the school’s administrator on video red-handed, Mrs Kuhn (Eva Löbau), the situation spirals out of control as Carla’s attempts to do the ‘right thing’ expose the divisions not only in her classroom, but amongst the staff themselves.

Benesch is a tour de force in this stifling drama, as we watch the sparkle in her eyes fade with each passing day. When evidence comes to light that maybe Carla could be wrong, you can literally feel her world disappear from underneath her. Equally fantastic is Leo Stettnisch, who plays Oskar, one of Carla’s students and, unfortunately for her, the son of Mrs Kuhn. Quick to piece together what his mum has been accused of and why she won’t go to work, Oskar sets his sights firmly on Carla, leading to a class rebellion in the third act.

The script never punches down on Carla and her idealism; afterall, there’s nothing wrong with wanting to fight the good fight. Perhaps, instead, it pokes at her naivety; that everyone is on the same wavelength as her, that we can all get along, that her Polish heritage won’t be used against her when push comes to shove. When in the titular lounge, Çatak shows that we never really grow out of cliques and with Carla being the newest teacher, it’s clear that her peers want her to pick a side. Either she’s with the school and every decision they make, or she’s ostracised. In some ways, the film reminds you of Ruben Ostlund’s equally great Involuntary which, among its numerous threads, saw a teacher having to go up against her peers.

Uncomfortable for all right reasons, The Teachers’ Lounge uses its microcosm of a school to dissect groupthink, bias, and institutionalism.

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