Leonie Benesch

The Teacher’s Lounge takes issues like the perpetration of stereotypes, the malleability of truth, the challenges of the educational system and the growing feelings of alienation that plague modern society and examines them through one cautionary tale. Leonie Benesch plays Carla Nowak, a teacher working at a junior high where the faculty is dealing with petty theft. A little money, some pencils, and other small items have been disappearing. Carla takes it upon herself to try to suss out the culprit, but it leads to accusations, bad feelings, and worse, with members of both the faculty and student body. That may not sound like its 98 minutes are all high pressure, but in director/co-screenwriter Ilker Çatak’s capable hands, they are

İlker Çatak’s German thriller The Teachers’ Lounge is a raw donut into the classroom/teacher dynamic where what is usually defined as a safe space in which students are nurtured and educated, is truly at times a petri dish of real-world antics, including racism, crime, cheating, violence, stereotypes, bias and social chaos at some of the most important developmental years of one’s life and it’s not always coming from the students.