The teacher/ Ucitelka

Slovakia/Czech Republic 2016

Dir: Jan Hřebejk

102 mins

Cast: Zuzana Mauréry, Zuzana Konecná, Csongor Kassai

Rating: M - Mature themes, coarse language and brief nudity

Teachers teach, but that’s not all. For students they’re dictators of classroom time and space, for parents they’re gatekeepers who determine their child’s future. Add a provocative twist to this eternal dynamic and the result is the exceptional The Teacher.

... The Teacher’s strength, in fact, is that it functions beautifully on parallel levels. Like the remarkable films Eastern European countries turned out regularly during the Soviet era, it marries a character-driven story with social concerns, in this case a deft parable about the kind of corrupt privileged society nominally egalitarian Socialism created.

... The filmmakers, who not surprisingly say they were partially inspired by the American classic 12 Angry Men, play this string out with great skill, right down to a pitch-perfect finale. The Teacher does have a lesson to impart, but it does so in a wonderfully entertaining way.

Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times

Effectively transposing 12 Angry Men into the most intense PTA meeting of all time, Jan Hřebejk’s The Teacher is a sardonic, richly seriocomic morality play that uses a delicate touch to explore why communism never seems to work out in the long run. Set in Czechoslovakia circa 1983 — when the country was just beginning to peek out from behind the Iron Curtain — and loosely inspired by true events, this crowd-pleasing standout from the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival’s competition slate leverages its hyper-specific setting to convey a universal story of fear and power. It’s a lot more fun than it sounds. ...

David Ehrlich, Variety