The Teachers’ Lounge Review | School’s Out (of Its Mind)

A work of great intensity and paranoia, German filmmaker Ilker Çatak’s The Teachers’ Lounge takes an already emotionally taxing and often thankless job in modern society and pushes things to their most terrifying extremes. The Teachers’ Lounge – German’s selection for International Feature Oscar contention this year – isn’t a horror movie, but one could be forgiven for feeling like it is by the time it wraps up. Turning a supposedly innocuous setting into a powder keg almost immediately, Çatak’s unique and unparalleled look at the stresses placed upon teachers arrests the viewer’s attention and begs for further discussion.

The Teachers’ Lounge is set at a junior high school where teachers have been plagued by a rash of thefts believed to be committed by one of the seventh grade students. The principal (Anne-Kathrin Gummich) and many fellow teachers have zeroed in on the male students in the classroom of Carla Nowak (Leonie Benesch), particularly Ali (Can Rodenbostel), who just so happened to be flush with cash one day seemingly out of nowhere. But when it turns out that accusing the student was nothing more than racially profiled bias, Carla sets a trap designed to capture the thief once and for all, with hope that no one is wrongfully accused again. But despite her best intentions to help restore peace and trust to the school, her “sting operation” ends up making things exponentially worse, driving a further wedge between the teachers, school administration, parents, and the students under their care.

The Teachers’ Lounge begs not to be spoiled because there’s a major twist every few minutes, but thanks to Çatak’s adroit pacing and the tight script co-written by Johannes Duncker and the director, the increasingly sharp turns never grow tiresome or ridiculous. The Teachers’ Lounge turns the modern day classroom into an ethical and philosophical minefield that teachers have to navigate on a daily basis; one that turns many educators into hardened cynics and tests the patience and willpower of even the most optimistic idealists, like Carla. It’s a near perfect microcosm of a modern society where tensions run high all the time and everyone doubles down on their own suspicions, worst opinions, and theories as being the only correct answers. In short, The Teachers’ Lounge is thrilling because it feels terrifyingly plausible, as if it’s taking place in real time somewhere in the world at this moment.

The division between the students and their adult counterparts is a wide one, and possibly because of how they approach the situation at hand. The adults see the children as little agents of chaos capable of doing or saying anything, but once they’re confronted with the truth behind the crimes happening within the school, their reactions are just as brutal towards their co-workers. In a bid to fight back, the kids in Carla’s classroom – most notably young Oskar (Leonard Stettnisch), whose mother (Eva Löbau) turns out to play a pivotal role in the school scuttlebutt – engage in a form of relatively civil disobedience that’s handled more like a petty annoyance. In truth, the kids might be handling what’s happening better than the adults, none of whom can agree on anything, but all of whom are angrily demanding satisfaction. 

Every major character in The Teachers’ Lounge has something they want to keep hidden, but never for the same reason. Whether it’s to save face, appease parents, squash rebellion, or to simply stay under the radar, no one tells the full truth, and that repression naturally leads to lashing out. The kids are suspicious, but the reactions of the adults are far more chilling and telling about the type of environment they work within. Ranks close when danger is near, asses are covered, and the punishment for being wrong doesn’t line up with what justified, actionable consequences would be under ideal, equitable conditions. Çatak deftly exposes the hypocrisy behind amassing burdens of proof and “zero tolerance” policies as street-sweeper tools that only serve to foster further mistrust and anguish.

Çatak shoots and stages The Teachers’ Lounge as if it were a race against the clock thriller. There’s barely any time to breathe, and Benesch’s performance perfectly matches the character’s stress level. It’s easy to identify with an idealistic teacher because it’s seen as a noble profession, and tragic to watch someone in that sort of position become confronted with what their job has become. Even when Carla makes terrible mistakes, including taking investigative matters into her own hands, these decisions are made out of hope that peace can prevail. She’s misguided and mentally fraying, but when placed into contrast with some of her co-workers – particularly a pair of vigorously accusatory and catty teachers, played wonderfully by Michael Klammer and Sarah Bauerett – her actions are the closest thing Çatak’s film has to heroic actions.

The Teachers’ Lounge starts off as an unconventional whodunnit where the stakes are relatively moderate in the grand scheme of things. But the reaction to these crimes from already stressed out (and, let’s face it, woefully under-compensated) employees would have one believe it’s the end of the world. “Solving” the crime changes nothing, and once parents and their kids start responding in kind to the overall fallout, the rage and mistrust only spreads. The Teachers’ Lounge is a sharply realized and performed commentary on a modern age where closure seems all but impossible, and pain is drawn out as long as humanly possible because of the rush people get from being angry. It’s not a pleasant space to stay in for very long, but for the length of Çatak’s film, it’s a bracing, unfiltered, and chilling experience.

The Teachers’ Lounge opens on Friday, January 19, 2024 at TIFF Lightbox in Toronto and Cineplex International Village in Vancouver. It expands to Ottawa, Winnipeg, and Edmonton on January 26, and to additional Canadian cities throughout the winter.