Directed by İlker Çatak and released in 2023, “The Teachers’ Lounge” made its world premiere at the Berlin Film Festival, drawing significant attention. The film was hailed as the best German production of the year and won awards for “Best Director,” “Best Actress,” “Best Screenplay,” and “Best Editing” at the German Cinema Awards. Additionally, it competed for “Best International Film” on behalf of Germany at the 96th Academy Awards.

The film follows Carla Nowak (Leonie Benesch), a math and physical education teacher at the beginning of her career, who starts a new job at a school and takes an idealistic approach to solving a theft case there. Throughout this process, she encounters a lack of understanding among her colleagues, parents, and students, with the main suspect being the mother of her student, Oskar. This situation leads Carla to question how her idealism clashes with reality.

The film strikingly portrays how Carla, with her well-intentioned efforts, ends up alienating almost everyone around her. Leonie Benesch delivers a natural and powerful performance as Carla, a young and idealistic teacher who treats her students as individuals, engaging with them equally and without hesitation. Coming from a Polish immigrant family, Carla stands out as a character who uncompromisingly upholds justice. Despite suspicions, she defends Ali, a student from a Turkish immigrant family, in her classroom.

The film prominently features ethical conflicts, issues of racism, and a lack of solidarity within the group. Director İlker Çatak does not merely present these events in a small German classroom as a simple process of uncovering a crime and its perpetrator; instead, he aims to provoke the audience with questions, thereby creating a space for broader discussion.

In the film, the question Carla poses to her students about whether 0.999 is equal to 1 is not a random choice. Director İlker Çatak, focusing on the concepts of guilt and victimhood as subtly distinguished as the mathematical difference between these two numbers, along with cinematographer Judith Kauffman, have done an excellent job visually. The use of the shoulder camera technique in the film specifically focuses on Carla’s inner world and the impact of the conflicts she encounters on her character, successfully drawing the audience into the events. This technique visually conveys the blurred lines between reality and illusion to the audience, thereby intensifying the atmosphere of tension and uncertainty in the film. Designed by Çatak and co-writer Johannes Duncker, the setting of the film almost entirely within the school confines the characters within a framework, heightening the existing tension. Metaphorically, the students and teachers represent society, while the school represents the country that society inhabits.

In summary, “The Teachers’ Lounge” focuses not on who committed the crime, but on how the process was managed, essentially holding up a mirror to society through the lens of an educational institution. The film realistically depicts the unintended consequences of Carla’s well-intentioned actions, showcasing how her journey deviates. The film successfully maintains tension and keeps the audience engaged through its narrative structure, thereby raising anticipation and curiosity for the director’s future films.