Herr Bachmann und seine Klasse

Winner of the Silver Bear Jury Prize at the Berlinale earlier this year, Maria Speth’s intimate and yet epic consideration of one teacher’s devotion to his students—most of them immigrants—brings to mind the work of the great American documentarian Frederick Wiseman in both its complexity and its wisdom. Dieter Bachmann is not your run-of-the-mill teacher, that’s for sure—he intersperses his grammar lessons with musical jam sessions for one thing—but, like the film itself, he generates something more and more precious in these trying times: optimism. This is the best documentary of the year—don’t miss it!

‘[An] affectionate and inspiring portrait of an affectionate and inspiring man… As much as the laid-back, woolly-hatted Dieter Bachmann—who looks more like a rock-band roadie than a schoolteacher—is the primary subject of this lengthy but absorbing and illuminating documentary, and collectively, the pupils of class 6b emerge as his rambunctious backing band, “Mr. Bachman and His Class” [the English title] also performs a third function. It makes you see the valour of all the individuals working within an education system whose institutions and practices are more usually met with cynicism and suspicion.’—Jessica Kiang, Variety