Monsieur Lazhar (Falardeau, 2011)

Monsieur Lazhar (Falardeau, 2011) - Locarno 2011

A refugee from Algeria starts to teach traumatized children in French Canada.

A very touching story and well constructed. I did have a little bit of a problem with the premise with the children being slightly too much traumatized for my taste. In my memory, me and my mates were surprisingly good in getting over grief when a classmate/teacher or so died (also suicide). But in itself the film works great and it deserved the price of the audience.

The awkward dating scene was very well constructed. Acting was very good. Main actors performance even reminded me a bit of Kingsley's character in Schindlers: devout at first glance, but does his own thing because he has to and he wants to. And he gets his way in the end.

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