Laurent Cantet’s ‘The Class’

Posted by editor@vimooz.com on December 22, 2008 under Foreign Film | Comments are off for this article

Laurent Cantet’s “The Class,” winner of the prestigious Palm d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival and France’s submission to the Academy Awards for the best foreign language Oscar focuses on the classroom interactions between a high school teacher and his unruly, multicultural roster of young charges, presenting the face of the future of France.

Cantet got the idea for the film while while promoting his previous film, 2005’s “Heading South,” he met François Bégaudeau, who was promoting “Entre les Murs,” his book on his years as a high school teacher.

Cantet end up using Bégaudeau as the teacher in the film, and through casting found a school and the 25 volunteers who appear in the film. To allow the exchanges between Bégaudeau and the students to flow, Cantet had three cameras running at once, one on the teacher, one on the students and one to capture anything else. [via]