Mr Marin is played by François Bégaudeau, a man with no prior acting experience, and if he appears utterly comfortable and natural in the role, that's because he's the real-life teacher whose memoirs inspired Cantet to make this film. As the new school year begins, he introduces himself to his new class and begins the arduous process of reaching out to each of them. In fact, the drama of the film's second half is actually instigated by his lack of professionalism, when he finally loses his temper and recklessly hurls the word pétasses towards the two girls whose behaviour had been getting under his skin. Situations range from a new student struggling to fit in to troublemakers refusing to pay attention, and it looks like some of them might not make it to the end of the academic year.

We never find out about his home life or his personal life, though one pupil offers a cheeky speculation, which is to be subtly important.One was the Italian crime drama Gomorra, based on a non-fiction bestseller about the Camorra's dealings. At break-time she chats with her friends in the outside courtyard, exchanging gossip or comparing the latest mobile-phone ringtones.

Overall, The Class is a remarkable film that proves beyond a doubt that teaching is the hardest job on the planet. When he chalks up examples of good and bad grammar on the blackboard, they ask pointedly why he uses Anglo-Saxon names such as "Bill" and not, say, "Rachid". I had a friend who had a class with Esmeralda and said she was like a Duracell bunny - she never stops - but that can be good because it teaches you about human nature.The site's consensus reads, "Energetic and bright, this hybrid of documentary style and dramatic plotting looks at the present and future of France through the interactions of a teacher and his students in an inner-city high school. Laurent Cantet's Entre les murs is being released in English-speaking countries as The Class, but a more accurate translation of its French title is Between the Walls, and that would be a very appropriate appellation for this remarkable film. Compared to the sticky and stale fizzy drinks being served up in cinemas in the post-Oscar dead zone right now, this tastes like a glass of ice-cold water.

One of the most valuable and relevant life lessons that my University has taught me is the purpose of education itself. When the teacher begins to talk to the students about the imperfect subjunctive, they are quick to question the merit of such knowledge, deriding it as bourgeois language which has no relevance to the way they communicate. Awards Watch With 'Gomorrah' and 'Il Divo,' Italy In Spotlight at 21st European Film Award Nominat". It often comes across as a docu-drama: some classroom scenes are improvised and others are based on real-life incidents, so it has a very authentic feel overall. The trickiest member of the class is Souleymane (Franck Keita), a boy from Mali with family problems and a temper.

The end result is extremely realistic, but it is a chiaroscuro form of realism, with each nuance of teenage behaviour so subtly drawn that it feels almost like a police procedural transplanted to different soil. But in recent weeks, as she leaves school at the end of the day, Esmeralda has been stopped by strangers in the street. This dialogue consists in sharing the pieces of truth that every single individual, students and teachers alike, have gathered in their lives.