Un Métier Sérieux

\"You’re lucky to have a teacher at all.” Doctoral student Benjamin (Vincent Lacoste) arrives at the collège Victor Hugo (a \"normal\" establishment, in the Paris banlieue) as a substitute teacher in Maths. He joins a sympathetic team of teachers including, among others, Pierre (François Cluzet), Meriem (Adèle Exarchopoulos), Sandrine (Louise Bourgoin) and Fouad (William Lebghil). Advice for \"holding the class\" (short hair glasses) or improve the courses (with YouTube tutorials rather than the unsuitable tools of the institution) to more difficult topics (the dilemma about punishing students who have crossed a limit, vocational crises, the weight of an administration that asks of teachers things beyond their abilities, etc.) — the film examines with a magnifying glass the place of the teacher (\"powerlessness, failure, injustice, they’re all part of the job\") in its professional milieu. But most of all, it shows that teachers are men and women like every other, with lives outside of the school, feelings, hopes, sorrows; it also shows that they are parents too, and the parents of pupils are not always easy to deal with… Shining a light on that world, putting it in context and offering a different perspective: A Real Job scans the world of today through this microcosm and pays a beautiful tribute to a currently unjustly undervalued profession. For this, Thomas Lilti relies on a group of wonderful actors, on a well structured screenplay (giving space to each of his many characters and to all the facets of teaching he explores) and on his talent for creating empathy and elements of reflexion in a way that feels very alive (often funny, sometimes very moving) and in an willingly optimistic state of mind (\"we do everything together, we help each other\") without however hiding the difficulties to face and overcome.